…Say it is not good for business
The Shippers Association of Lagos State (SAL) has described the difficulties currently being encountered by the commuters accessing the Apapa ports due to the ongoing reconstruction of roads in the area as not being good for business.
The President of the Association, Rev. Dr. Jonathan Nicol who made this known while speaking to journalists on the sideline of the meeting the association and the Nigerian Shippers’ Council in Lagos recently regretted that movement from the park Lane Apapa to the Apapa Port which ordinarily would not have taken more than ten minutes now take an upwards of one hour and more to get to the port.
While commending the Federal government for undertaking to reconstruct those roads, Rev. Nicol called on the Contractors handling the projects to consider opening some portions of the roads which they were yet to commence work on.
“I personally went to the port couple of days ago and I saw the harrowing experience that we encounter to get into Apapa port. From Park lane to Apapa main port took us some hours and that is not good for business”.
“So, we are calling on the federal government and the contractors handling these roads, that the areas they have not started to repair should be opened and we are looking at our trucks entering the ports, a truck is not a taxi, the length takes more spaces than three cars and you have a driver there, you don’t expect him to meander the way a taxi will meander through the traffic and you did not give us good roads”, Nicol said.
He however lamented the lack of good access roads to the nation’s seaports regretting that that was one of the shameful experiences shippers go through in their own country even as he disclosed that they don’t go through such in the ports of other climes.
The SAL boss opined that although nobody was praying for major accident to occur, the life of the driver and other road users were in danger in a case where on leaving the port, meandering through the potholes and a container fall off the truck notwithstanding the colossal loss to the shippers whose goods were damaged in the process.
He bemoaned the myriad of problems facing the shippers in the industry which seemed not to be getting the attention of the authorities wondering whether this was so because of the fact that the Minister of Transport was not based in Lagos to witness some of these problems first hand.
According to him, “we have so many problems in the maritime sector; I don’t know whether it is because the Minister is based at Abuja, he doesn’t know the gravity of what these people are going through”.
“We don’t want an economic breakdown in this country. I tell you, if we do, then, the manufacturing industry will suffer, all other sectors relating to maritime industry will suffer and we have been very prudent, we have been very cooperative with the law even though we know that these laws were implemented at the detriment of the shippers, we have never complained”.
“Our contractors, our partners, the freight forwarders cannot take half of what we are taking. All the bills put before them, come to us as the shippers, the owners of the cargoes and we pay all the bills”.
He therefore called on the government to take steps towards ameliorating the plights of the shippers whom he said had been patriotic enough in discharging their responsibilities as the citizens of this country adding that the relationship should be symbiotic rather than a straight-jacket thing.
