…accuses them of conspiracy
The Chairman, National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF), Apapa Chapter, Dr. Fred Ajuzie has accused the terminal operators and the shipping companies of conspiring to keep their secrets to themselves away from Nigerians and the government.
Ajuzie who was speaking in an interview with Primetime Reporters in his office in Lagos stated that this was evident in the way and manner they run their businesses at the nation’s ports which according to him were anti people.
He described the situation where the shipping companies have refused to provide a holding bay where their empty containers should be returned to on the successful discharge of the content by the truckers as an evident to his claim.
He further stated that the conspiracy was also evident in the sense that the terminal operators who ought to pressurize the shipping companies to provide a holding bay were keeping silent about the trend thereby encouraging them to continue in their negligence.
The development he said had necessitated the traffic gridlock being witnessed on the port access roads in Apapa resulting in an empty container lying idle on top of a truck for days if not for weeks thereby amounting to heavy economic loss on the part of the truckers.
According to him,” shipping companies are the Goliath that we have in cargo clearing. They don’t have a holding bay. After taking delivery of your goods and you want to bring back the container, they don’t have where you can drop the container. That is why the trailers are on the roads everywhere, they now use the roads as parking bays”.
“APMT and other terminal operators are also not helping issues, they don’t want to come out and tell the government about their problems because they are in partnership. Everybody is keeping each other’s secret and on whose account?”
“They don’t want to come up and tell the government what they are passing through. APMT is the third in the world in terms of terminal management, they are certified and they have never been found with any fault in their activities elsewhere but here in Nigeria, they were found wanting because they are having issues which they don’t want to tell the government”.
The NAGAFF chieftain refuted the claims by the terminal operators that they were not using the terminals as a holding bay wondering why container laden trucks were littered along the roads leading to their terminals even as he averred that he had never seen the number of trucks that usually parked along the creek road In Apapa anywhere in the world.
He bemoaned the commissions being collected by the shipping companies in Nigeria contending that that was not supposed to be as the importers had paid the shipping commission before the cargo departed the country of origin thereby taking care of whatever commission which their representatives in Nigeria may claims.
He therefore beckoned on the Federal government to look into the activities of the shipping companies and the terminal operators with a view to curtailing their excesses and make the take responsibility for whatever they needed to put in place to make transactions in the ports easier and simple for Nigerians.
