The new online ticketing policy by the Abia State Government to the Vehicle and Tricycle association is no doubt a new dimension to enhance the revenue generation in the State.
However, like any new scheme, its acceptability within the circle of the different unions of commercial tricycle riders in the state has been put to test owing to several factors.
Our reporter takes a look at the reasons behind the policy and factors seemingly militating against it.
Taking a ride to Isi Gate, our reporter was able to establish from a tricycle rider that wanted to remain anonymous that one of the cumbersome things to note from the e-ticketing is time-wasting.
He complained that most of the Keke Napep riders are on hire purchase and always in a hurry to meet their daily target so standing on a queue to get a ticket waste a lot of their time.
“Keke work is a sharp work which the online ticket hinders. Being in the queue every day to purchase a ticket takes a lot of time even the girls that sell the ticket, most of them do not have a phone. What they do is to use a book to copy out the plate number and your phone number before going to look for a phone to register you. No matter how you explain this to a task force official, they will never believe that you have already purchased the online ticket and before you know it, with the delay and arrest, all your passengers will leave you. We keep losing money daily due to the irregularities of the system. This online ticketing is not well planned. We have not reached the level of the advanced economy where we will say everything is organized. We are a developing country. Abia State has not reached that level where you will say things are in order. We don’t want an online ticket. Everything should be manual as it was before.”
It was also gathered that most of the tricycle riders stay up to 30 minutes to 1 hour in trying to purchase the daily ticket and sometimes, they stand a chance of losing their passengers who they leave in their vehicle with an excuse to purchase the ticket.
The Keke riders complained bitterly that they preferred the manual way of buying a ticket from the roadside sales girls of the agency and wish that it remains so.
“The people they gave the contract of selling the daily ticket should have a proper way of remitting the money to the State government, they should be accountable for generating. There are many means to monitor people working for you. They should provide other means of settling dispute instead of leaving us to suffer the consequences. This issue has already caused a lot of fight between Keke operators and agbero as they will never believe that you have paid the daily ticket. The task force also is not helping matters as most of them do not even have a phone.
Also, not every Keke operator has a phone so how will they receive the message sent to their phone after paying for the ticket. If it is possible, we should go back to the manual way which will be better for everybody. We are not against the N150 as everyone has accepted to pay it but the network failure, queue and others have hindered the progress of the process. Every organization has network failure even banks how much more online ticketing of Keke operators.”
Remember that tricycle riders staged a protest on the 16th of September over the new introduction of online ticketing in Umuahia, Abia State.
In some of the placards they carried, they opposed the online ticketing stating that it wastes their time and complained also about the poor network.
In a seminar hosted by Abia State Internal Revenue Service at Constitution Cresent Primary School, Aba, Abia State, the Chairman, Abia State Internal Revenue Service, Mr Celestine Agbara briefed the attendees the purpose of implementing such digital ideal, ‘which he mentioned that the purposes of e-Ticketing are to eradicate fake tickets and manipulations, other irregularities trending in the unions’ system and generate more revenue to the government purse through proper accountability.’
For some Keke operators, buying the ticket is a way of avoiding any friction from the taskforce team.
“I buy my online ticket but most Keke operators do not buy the ticket and that is basically what causes friction between the taskforce people and the Keke operators.”
However, it was also gathered that there was always network failure during registration and this also has been a source of concern to the operators.
Network failure was another challenge identified by the Keke operators as they receive proof of payment most times at night and this causes a lot of harm to them as the taskforce team will never believe that they have paid for the ticket.
“Initially, we thought we will be the ones processing the ticket online and that will be hard on us. We found out that the same people selling the analogue will also process the online ticket and so it’s not affecting us as its still the same process of buying the ticket every day. The online ticketing is a good development. It’s still the same N150, we pay N100 for the online ticket and N50 for the leaders of the association so it’s still the same thing.”
Speaking with one of the sellers of the ticket at the Umuahia North Local Government Area, Abia State, the woman who spoke on account of anonymity stated that the major problem of the online ticket is the network failure and time-wasting. She said that most times after buying the ticket, the Keke operators will not get the receipt of payment until late at night and some are held by the task force even though they have bought the ticket but there is no way to authenticate the payment.
Speaking with one of the leaders of the Keke operators in his Umuahia office, he said; “this is a government policy. Government looks at it as a way of generating revenue for the State and from these roads, other infrastructural amenities are built. We cannot go against this after the government explained why it introduced the e-ticket. If they say that they were losing a lot of money from Keke operators when it was analogue and saw e-ticket as the solution then we have to abide by it but as the case may be, there were a lot of challenges when the e-ticket was introduced. There was network failure, non-compliance of Keke operators as it was a new methodology and the queue as the Keke operators will like to see a proof of payment before leaving the premises. In this, some of the waste up to half of the day to get this ticket and still have the problem of receiving the proof of payment in their phones. When accosted by the enforcement team, it becomes a problem.
There were a lot of challenges and it will continue as long as Nigeria is concerned. The e-ticket is very good based on the analysis of the State government since it is a method to generate revenue but in terms of obtaining the ticket, it has become an everyday challenge. On Friday last week, there was no network throughout the day and 70% of Keke operators never obtained the e-ticket unless the lucky people. There is a lot of challenges but since it is an instituted policy, there is nothing we can do.
The Union has made effort to supply our sales ladies with Android phones to help maximize sales because we asked for all these but they said they cannot provide it and our hands are tied when it comes to network failure as it is not something we can do anything about.”
