The National Association of Road Transport Owners (NARTO) has blamed the practice of parking on the highways especially along Apapa by truck drivers on the inability of the government regulatory agencies to effectively discharge their responsibility to the people.
The Executive Secretary of NARTO, Mr. Alogo Ogbogo made this known while presenting a paper at the Nigerian Auto-Marine Conference/Fair held in Lagos by Portbizness Communications in conjunction with Maximum Value Auto Care Limited.
Represented by the General Manager Operations, NARTO, Mr. Stephen Okafor, Ogbogo maintained that parking of trucks on the road was not on the instance of the truck owners neither was it a deliberate act, but happened because drivers had no alternative.
He insisted that the act was caused by the government and not the truckers but people always give it to the truckers and the drivers.
“The Nigerian port originally was designed to have a holding bay but Nigerians being who we are did not follow that design. They have concessioned the port, gave those spaces to the private investors, most of the terminals, most of the shipping companies have taken over such spaces and such spaces are where these trucks are supposed to be parking before they go to the various terminals to carry whatever cargo they want to carry.
“And most of the trucks you see come from the far north, like our members in NARTO, they have garages in their respective head offices and they don’t just come here because they want to come because Lagos is the commercial nerve of Nigeria, Apapa precisely.
“You look at Apapa now, we have about 52 oil depots, A, B, C, D want their oil to be lifted, what do you do? You give authority to those trucks to come, meanwhile, they have paid for the products and you know that you have only one route to access these ports but all of them will come out at the same time, what will you expect? Congestion on the road!”
The NARTO chieftain adduced that most of the shipping companies were supposed to have holding bays where the empty containers were supposed to be offloaded but regretted that they had refused to maintain those holding bays and converted them to other uses instead of the holding bay which was in the original plan.
“So, the truckers always take those containers to the ports instead of taking them to the shipping companies’ holding bays to be stacked and who are responsible for all these things? It is the government regulatory agencies; they are supposed to oversee all these things.
“And if you go to the oil depots too, they don’t have terminals to a
ccommodate most of these trucks but the agency which is the Department of Petroleum Resources, they are the authority that gives license to most of these oil depots but they don’t consider all these factors. They give you license so long as you do what they proposed. All of that was happening in the past, now, all of us are suffering the effect of it.
“An average transporter wants to go in there, load and come out because your turn over determines the profit you make. We are not happy, most of the drivers you see there stay on the road there for two weeks, some one month, do everything there, take their bath there, defecate and you see, they are faced with a lot of dangers. We are not happy about it”.
He concluded by saying that NARTO was doing what it was supposed to do by channeling all their problems to the government for solutions.
On his part, the Port Manager, Kaduna Dry Port, Inland Container Nigeria Limited (ICNL), Mr. Rotimi Raheem added that most of those trucks that carry containers spend three to four days to drop their empty container even as he recalled that the government had earlier directed the shipping companies to have their holding bays wherein trucks coming from far north and other parts of Nigeria would be able to drop the empty containers at the holding bay and go and pick another container.
Raheem can imagined where container was supposed to be returned back to the port and the truckers find it very difficult to return that empty containers for three to four days regretting that one could imagine that a lot of things were being wrongly done by the government.
“When you give directive, you stand by it and you stand by it that shipping companies must comply. So, you can see the multiplication of all these problems, some are due to our inefficiency particularly the shipping companies where they are supposed to direct most of these trucks that carry empty containers. So, there is a lot government needs to do, when you give a directive, you stand by it”, he counseled.
Photo: Representative of Executive Secretary of NARTO, Mr. Stephen Okafor, Port Manager, Kaduna Dry Port, ICNL, Mr. Rotimi Raheem and Mr. Armstrong Ilile of Coscharis Group at the Nigerian Auto-Marine Conference/Fair in Lagos recently.
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