By Adelola Amihere
The Managing Director, Nigerian Railway Corporation, NRC Engr Fidet Okhiria yesterday disclosed that the Nigerian Railway Cooperation (NRC) has commenced the test run of the electionic ticketing for the Abuja-Kaduna train service and that the platform would be fully launched on the January 20th.
Also, the Minister on his Twitter handle yesterday said “Yes, we have commenced test bookings on the NRC E-ticketing platform, starting with the Abuja-Kaduna rail line. Next week, we’ll launch fully. Check it out and make bookings at: nrc.tps.ng.
Since the launch of the Abuja-Kaduna train service in 2016, Nigerians have emphasized the need for an e-ticketing platform to enable Nigerians book online so as to curb the unabaiting ticket racketeering and reduce passengers stress of goung to the station to purchase tickets.
The Federal Executive council in January 2020 approved the sum of N900million to a private firm, Secure IB to provide a secure Automated fare collection Solution for NRC. .Speaking exclusively to The Authority, the NRC Bossexplained that Nigerians can no go to www.nrc.tps.ng to buy and print out their e-ticket or either buy and come to the station where tickets would be issued.
He said that is the first phase of the project, the second phase is whereby a bar code is generated on your phone and the validators will validate the code at the station and issue you a ticket.
Okhiria said they have been test running it since December in other to ensure money is not diverted. we initially started with 10 then increased it to 25, 50 and in all money has been going to the right source which is the government.
“This week we will throw it open to the public and it would be officially launched next week”
The MD said the e ticketing only covers for Abuja-Kaduna, as the bid for the concessioning of the e ticketing for Lagos-Ibadan and Itakpe-Warri would soon be thrown open also.
