The President, Shippers’ Association Lagos State (SALS), Rev. Dr. Jonathan Nicol has said that the Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC) should not stop at plans to abolish the container deposit as charged by shipping companies in Nigeria but should take it further to make the shipping companies pay demurrage for overtime empty containers at the nation’s seaports.
Nicol who stated this in an interview with Primetime Reporters in Lagos suggested that for any empty container that was above one month at the ports, shipping company responsible for the evacuation of the empty container should be made to pay demurrage to the federal government.
He argued that if the shipping companies measure their containers deposit by Dollar, the Nigerian government should also measure according to the number of days the empty containers stayed at the ports by Dollar since Nigeria is not a dumping ground.
In his words,” Go to TICT (Tincan Island Container Terminal), you see stacks of containers up to ten, those days they won’t allow you to stack containers like that, the highest you could go is five containers but now you have ten stacks of empty containers. Why can’t they export them? It is because they cannot export them back to Europe.
“So, all these are infractions and I think Nigerian shippers have been bastardized more than enough in so many ways and the business is dying slowly. So, I don’t blame Shippers’ Council for doing that (proposing to abolish container deposit), in fact they should go further to say any empty container that remains in Nigeria (above one month), they will pay $1,000 per day for the number of days”.
Tracing the origin of container deposit, he said,” When we were bringing cargoes through the harsh of the vessels and we have stacking areas in the ports until they introduce containers. Their marketing strategy was that we can maximize space, we bought into it. At the early stage, we were not paying anything, they will give you number of days to bring the container back because they will export the empty containers back to their countries of origin. So, you the shipper will struggle to make sure that empty container is deposited in their terminal, as soon as that is done, you are free within that specific time and that was how we started this trip.
“Then suddenly, we started getting N50,000, from N50,000 to N100,000 to N200,000 and now to N400,000 and most of these containers they are bringing now are containers they cannot return back to Europe.
“I brought some electrical equipment through Grimaldi and it rained heavily and those things don’t go with water. So, when we opened the container for examination, most of them were with water. The good thing is that they were well packaged and they took photographs of it and they said to us, by the time you offload, if there is any damage, they will pay.
“Such containers will not go back to Europe and they are placing deposit on that and when eventually you return that container, they will not be able to export it because they don’t have a place to send that container to. That is why we have so many containers all over the country because they can’t return them to Europe and they are collecting deposit from it. It is not fair”.
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