60,000 applicants seek 1,200 LASTMA job

Kayode Ogundele
Kayode Ogundele
LASTMA officers

Over 60,000 applicants have applied for the Lagos State Government’s traffic job, which has only 1,200 openings.

Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos State is planning to beef up the traffic manpower of its traffic agency, the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority, LASTMA, and the Vehicle Inspection Officers, VIO.

The state government placed an advert for recruitment last month in some newspapers and over 60,000 graduates comprising HND and degree holders reportedly applied for the jobs.

The State’s Ministry of Science and Technology which handled and designed the online application job portals and has been able to capture the data of over 60,000 applicants for the vacant positions.

State’s Head of Service, Olabowale Ademola says 1,200 successful applicants from the lot would be employed into LASTMA, VIO and other lesser positions in the civil service.

Cross section of LASTMA applicants
Cross section of LASTMA applicants

Last week, thousands of shortlisted HND holders thronged the State’s Civil Service Commission, SCC, for screening, with the examination to be conducted in batches at the Public Service Staff Development Centre, Lagos (PSSDC), Magodo.

Ajibola Aribiyi, Permanent Secretary, CSC, who spoke with journalists at Magodo, venue for HND screening, refused to disclose the actual number of applicants, but said he would do that after the conclusion of the exercise.

He said it was too premature to disclose the number of applicants now or the number the government wanted to employ as more applicants were still coming in from interested bodies.

Aribiyi said by Friday, he would call our reporter to disclose the actual figure to him, but that he would prefer to keep mum for now and face the ongoing screening squarely.

“As I speak with you now, many people are in the commission undergoing screening,” he said, saying that it was after the screening that the actual figure would be known.

One of the shortlisted applicants who came for screening at PSSDC on Monday and craved anonymity, said the oral interview was just to know the origin of the applicants as the interviewers asked questions pertaining to certain places and locations to ascertain if they were truly from the areas they claimed.

The last stage of the interview for the shortlisted candidates would be fitness test as they would be ordered to engage in a short distance marathon to ascertain their fitness for the LASTMA and VIO jobs. That has been scheduled for a later date.

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