The National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) has decried the inability of the Nigerian Shippers’ Council to stamp its feet on the ground and insist that the right thing be done in the nation’s maritime industry.
The Deputy National President Headquarters, NAGAFF, Chief Increase who observed this in a chat with our correspondent in Lagos attributed the development to absence of law to empower the Council in its new role as the port economic regulator.
Uche further blamed the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and other relevant government agencies which he said had not helped the Shippers’ Council to perform its new role to the port users adding that the freight forwarders had given their full support the council.
He recalled that in 2006 when the port was concessioned out to the private sector, the freight forwarders as well as other stakeholders kept calling on the government to name an agency as the port economic regulator without which the intention of the concession exercise would be defeated as there was need to supervise and monitor the activities of the terminal operators and the shipping companies.
According to him,” The Nigerian Shippers’ Council that is supposed to be the port economic regulator, you can see that their job is being caged somehow for the simple reason that there is no law now actually pronouncing them the economic regulator and eve the NPA and other agencies are not helping matters because we the freight forwarders, we are in support that the Shippers’ Council should go ahead and carry out the function of economic regulator because as at 2006 when the whole ports were concessioned, we kept calling that without a regulator in the industry, the government’s intendment for concessioning the terminals will not be achieved because we need to supervise the activities of the oncessionaires.
“So, they started and created series of charges in the industry whereby government will make policies, set up committees to checkmate some of their untoward activities but it will not make any impact. They continued making use of their internal policies whereby a certain terminal operator will give you his own conditions of service, you go to another terminal operator, it is a different thing altogether, shipping companies the same thing.
“So, all these things are contributory factors that have slowed down the development of the sector which is the maritime industry”.
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