Rotimi Amaechi, minister for
transportation, says reopening rail services in Nigeria could mean an
additional 2,000 novel coronavirus infections per day.
The minister added that Nigeria
will return to subsidising train transportation if rail services reopen with
social distancing in place to avoid the spread of the novel coronavirus disease
(COVID-19).
Speaking with Osasu Igbinedion on
The Osasu Show, Amaechi said it is economically unwise to resume rail services
now.
The former Rivers state governor
said the rail service, which was incurring losses in 2016, had broken even and
was making as much as N30 million in profits before the novel coronavirus
struck.
“We are not in a hurry to reopen
the train services, I had a conversation with the chairman in charge of the
technical committee on COVID-19, and I did say economically it is not wise,” he
said.
“First, you have about 88
passengers per coach, and for you to run social distancing on any of those
coaches, then you have to do about 40 passengers per coach, you would be making
a total loss.
“Currently we make about 120
million per month, and we spend about N90 million per month — at full capacity,
and we spend about N90 million per month.”
‘REOPENING MEANS WE’LL BE BACK TO POSTING LOSSES’
The minister explained that the
country would return to posting losses if the train services are reopened now.
“If you run at 40 passengers per
coach, you will not be making like 60 million and still be spending N90
million, and then we are back to making a loss,” Amaechi added.
“You would have to then be
subsidising the operational activities.
We don’t have that kind of money now.”
Speaking on the health impact,
Amaechi said one person could infect 40 people in a coach, and more.
“In terms of health, when I hear
people say there is this equipment you will bring to spray and screen everyone
you bring in to make sure they don’t have COVID, I say what about asymptomatic
patients?
“Just one person can infect the
40 persons in a coach. The doors are open, if he moves around, the chances are
that he would infect others. Until I am clear about how we would not infect
people.
“Before COVID, we were moving
4,300 passengers per day — even if you bring it down to 2300 passengers, that
means you’d be infecting 2,000 persons per day — that won’t be easy.”
The minister said he is trying to
convince President Muhammadu Buhari to virtually commission the newly-purchased
diesel multiple units (DMUs), which are faster.
“Once he commissions it, we’d do
a test run with it, and see how we would manage passengers vis-a-vis COVID. I
would hold a meeting in the next one week to see how to commission that.”
Railway services in Nigeria have
been shut down since March 2020.
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