Politics
THE Senate on Thursday, urged the Federal Government to include financial support in the package to the affected persons of the Oct.16 tragic fuel tanker fire disaster at Upper Iweka Onitsha, to enable them restart their businesses.
This followed a motion sponsored by Sen. Ifeanyi Ubah during Thursday’s plenary on “Tragic Fuel Tanker Fire disaster in Onitsha, Anambra State.”
The motion was co-sponsored by Senators Stella Uduah (PDP-Anambra North) and Uche Ekwunife (PDP-Anambra Central).
The senate also urged the state government to unravel the reason why Fire Service in in Anambra could not speedily respond to the emergency with a view to curtailing such incident in future.
It also urged the Nigerian Police Force to work in conjunction with the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) to carry out a thorough investigation of the circumstances leading to the accident.
This is with a view to prosecuting anyone found culpable in the preventable fire incident.
While debating the motion, Sen. Ubah described the death toll as unfortunate and called for acceleration in the passage of the Petroleum Tankers Safety Bill.
“For such magnitude of inferno could rage for over four hours before fire Service came to rescue still beats my imagination.”
The lawmaker said that in order to ensure safer roads across the country, there has to be stricter enforcement of traffic safety rules by the FRSC, the police and all relevant security agencies across the country.
Contributing, Sen. Oduah said that the accident could have been preventable if only there were good roads and the drivers of the tankers trained.
“Anambra North is indeed in need of federal intervention. Onitsha in particular is the metropolitan of the South east.
” The market in Onitsha is the market that services the Sub-Saharan; it is the market that has the daily turnover of N6.4 billion.”
She said that Onitsha market was crucial to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and so federal intervention was very important.
Similarly, Sen. Ike Ekweremadu said that the market had been in existence for over 80 years calling for the modernisation of the market.
“It is time for Anambra State Government to find money to modernise the market so that there could be easy access to the market in case we have a fire incident such as this.”
Ekweremadu further said that with the Act establishing insurance Industry in the country and as such public institutions such as markets should be insured.
“We are not use to insurance in this country. So it is time for us to find a way of letting people know the benefit of insurance. Insurance is key,” he said.
In his remark, President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan said that there was the need to ensure that tanker drivers were certified.
“We urge the FRSC to test drivers on the highways to ensure that they are not under any influence.”
NAN
– Nov. 7, 2019 @ 17:10 GMT |
Tags: Onitsha Fire Disaster: Senate urges FG to include financial support to affected persons
