No train ride without facemask — NRC 

Nigeria Railway Corporation
PHOTO CREDIT: SHIPS & PORTS archive

 

The Nigeria Railway Corporation (NRC) has declared its facilities and environs a no-mask no-entry zone in preparation for resumption of Kaduna–Abuja train service Wednesday

Manager, Abuja-Kaduna train service of NRC, Pascal Nnorli, said the corporation has put measures in place to ensure passengers obeyed all COVID-19 guidelines on the trains.

“We are 85 per cent ready because we know a day like that will come. If you pass through our station at Idu today, you will see a demo of what we intend to do in all the stations. You can see the social distancing marked at strategic locations. Now we have a definite date for resumption, we will complete them in all the passenger stations.

“Again, the first thing we are going to do is to decontaminate all our running stock, because we have parked them for a while, almost four months now and also decontaminate our stations and our offices. You can see on board we have selected the seats that are going to be used, for the business class we are reducing the number by half.

“And again, we have declared all railway environment and facilities no mask – no entry environment,” Nnorli added.

He said the station was expecting a Diesel Multiple Unit (DMU) with eight coaches and two heads, which would be used for express train.

He said that the full compliments of the additional stocks would go a long way to assuage the problem of teaming passengers.

He noted that the influx of passengers would be determined after the resumption of operations as some passengers would be skeptical to travel by train.

He said security personnels around the station had also been increased to enforce compliance of the rules.

“This is about life and death, it doesn’t know big man, middle man or small man, so anybody who is not willing to comply to those protocols we have set, please don’t come to our station,” he said.