The chairman of the Lagos State Parks and Garages, Alhaji Musiliu Akinsanya (MC Oluomo), on Thursday, announced the introduction of the bar code to checkmate untoward activities among some commercial bus drivers.

Akinsanya said the initiative would curb kidnapping and other criminal activities perpetrated by some drivers.

He said the problem of insecurity was a major concern and as stakeholders in the transportation sector, the agency could not fold its arms and allow charlatans to turn its parks and garages into criminal hideouts.

“Our goal is to leverage technology to detect some criminal elements using our parks and garages to perpetrate crimes. We want to make our parks and garages as safe as possible. We will make them hell for anyone with criminal intention,” he said.

He warned leaders of various parks and garages to weed out criminal-minded elements in their domains or they would be held responsible for their actions.

Speaking on how the bar code works, the Lagos State Parks and Garages Secretary, Mr Olayiwola Lemboye, said commuters would download an app and scan the bar code on buses to confirm if they are safe for boarding.

“Once you scan the bar code on any bus, it will bring out certain information about the park or garage for commuters to determine if the bus is safe for boarding or not. For those who usually forget their ‘loads’ in the bus, the code will help passengers recollect the vehicle’s number plate and trace it to the park or garage such the vehicle operates from.

“We are using this medium to urge the public to try as much as possible to key into this project because the bar code will assist in curbing the cases of kidnapping, theft and other societal vices people perpetrate with public buses.

“We are urging the public to give us the benefit of the doubt on this project and key into it. It is for the good of all,” Lemboye said.

Mr Isaiah Arowolo from Dotmatech Technologies Limited, the firm handling the installation of the bar code, said over 20,000 buses has been registered into a central database.

Arowolo said: “We have generated the QR code sticker for the 20,000 buses registered and the number is increasing daily. How does it work? We have a unique QR code sticker which will be on each bus; the commuters will download the app from the Playstore or Apple iOS. When they scan the code on the bus, information will be given to them on that particular vehicle, including its number plate and the name of the secretary of the branch of that park or garage. The reason for that is just for them to have the history of the car or vehicle they board in a month or in a week or daily so that they can fall back to it and after one month.” (Nigerian Tribune)

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