The Shippers Association of Lagos State (SALS) has appealed to the feuding freight forwarding associations to maintain peace and work towards enhancing professionalism in the sector that had been bedeviled by quacks and touts.
Speaking in Lagos, the President of SALS, Rev. Dr. Jonathan Nicol said that the appel became necessary as never before had the nation had anything as good as the transformation so far brought about by the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) in recent times.
According to Nicol,” Now when we are talking about the freight forwarders, we are looking at the future generations that will take over from us. That is what CRFFN stands for. CRFFN is there to build the future generations who are interested in freight forwarding business and you know that sector is huge compared with the type of cargo we have in this country”.
“So, the Federal Government set up a body that will train and retrain people for the trade, we should commend the government. Now, we want the government and all the associations to speak with one voice irrespective of how old you are, nobody is totally useless in this world”.
“This problem that is on ground now is something we thought they should have resolved before now. Sharing formula and sometimes when I look at this thing they call sharing formula, it gets me very upset. What are you sharing?”
While warning the freight forwarders that the federal government could rise one day and proscribe all the freight forwarding associations in the country if they failed to put their acts together, he reminded them that the impending proscription would not in any way stop the shippers from taking delivery of their goods from the ports.
“So, they should thread softly, they should find a way to resolve this issue because with us, the bottom line is money, so they took the governing council not in place as an excuse and that shouldn’t be for a profession. Infact, I expect them to come together and say okay, we are ready for this governing council election, that is what I expected them to do, not to rock the place”.
“Yes! I think the Registrar should do everything humanly possible to get the government to put in place a governing council as stipulated in the Act. Once that is in place, he should also probably educate the freight forwarders more on the requirements of their profession because that is not the source of their own income, it is an extra income for the associations not for the individuals”, he said.
