The Chairman, Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Mr. Olumide Fakanlu has assured of the freight forwarders’ readiness to return to their duty posts if the Management of AP Moller Terminal (APMT) and that of ENL were ready to meet about fifty percent of their demands.
Fakanlu who made this known while speaking with newsmen in Lagos on Thursday said that on meeting their demands by fifty percent, they would resume work while discussions on others continues as all their demands may not be met in one day.
He said, “Yes, if they can do two or three, that is about fifty percent now, we can resume our services, then there will always be another time to still achieve the remaining ones. So, it may not be all that the can do now, I agree”.
He maintained that there was no strike that had no implication stating that what was achieved at the end of the day was what matters most even as he said that in their own case, what matters to them was the smooth clearance of cargo from APMT at a better cost.
“We want them to improve in their services that is all so that cost can be reduced, that is what is of utmost importance to us now”, he said.
On his part, the Chairman, National Council of Managing Directors of Licensed Customs Agents (NCMDLCA) Apapa Chapter, Alhaji Ibrahim Tanko said that the freight forwarding associations in Apapa under the aegis of Joint Association Committee Apapa had articulated about twenty-two demands out of which five were of utmost importance to them.
Tanko averred that if the Management of the two companies could be able to meet those five, they were ready to resume their services.
According to him,” we are telling them that we cannot continue when our members will leave their houses to come to book for examination by 4 o’clock and close by 8 O’clock. We are no longer taking that. We asked them to reverse it back so that it commences by 8 o’clock in the morning and ends at 12noon”.
“Now, we want them to be booking by bill of lading, meaning, if a bill of lading is carrying ten containers and I make payment for them, let them position those ten containers and not positioning two or three containers, after four days, they position one again. No, let them position those containers at once because we paid for them”.
“Secondly, we are asking, if they issue us TDO, he TDO means Terminal Delivery Order, we believe it is a final document in the clearing process, if they issue us that terminal delivery order, we will not go and re-rate and pay money after issuing that TDO because it their fault”.
“If they give us terminal delivery order, our own is to give it to our drivers to go and load but the next you will hear they will tell you is that their crane is faulty or that their capacity is 120 trucks. If 120 trucks are in and your own is 121, that means you cannot go in and before that 120 trucks could finish, your TDO has expired and they will ask you to go back and re-rate it which is not going to work out. We said we are no longer doing that”.
On whether they pay money while re-rating the containers he had this to say,” yes, you have to pay money to re-rate. We are paying #12,000 per day that is what we have been saying”.
The NCMDLCA boss also said that they also demanded that inability of the freight forwarders to take delivery of their containers as a result of delays from APMT should no longer be borne by the freight forwarders rather APMT should be the one to pay them for the delays.
He went on to say that they would no longer tolerate a situation where shipping companies would make them to return empty containers to APMT adding that that was a ploy deployed by the shipping companies in connivance with APMT to rob them of their container deposits demanding that shipping companies should provide a holding bay where they would return those containers directly to them.
This according to him would go a long way in reducing the traffic gridlock being witnessed at Apapa and its environments.
While hoping for an amicable resolution of the crisis, Alhaji Tanko advised APMT withdraw from the contractual agreement if indeed it felt it has no capacity to handle the volume of trade that was coming to the terminal so as to give room for a more credible and capable operator to take over the terminal.
