…Demands electronic billing system
…Gets 4 days waiver
Following the inability of the Tincan Island Container Terminal (TICT) Management’s refusal to grant them waiver as a result of the withdrawal of service by truckers recently, the leadership of the two leading freight forwarding associations in Tincan Island Port, namely; the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) and the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) yesterday led other associations to picket the billing office of the TICT in Lagos.
The freight forwarders who arrived the TICT billing office at the Polysonic Mall, located at Point Road in Apapa, Lagos as early as 5.30am initially barricaded the office refusing the staff of TICT from gaining entry into their various offices but later rescind the decision following intervention from their leadership who directed them not to stop the staff from gaining entry into their offices but to stop freight forwarders from engaging in any form of business transaction with the terminal.
It will be recalled that the truck owners and drivers a fortnight ago embarked on withdrawal of service at the Lagos ports which lasted for a period of nine days and was later called. On resumption of work, so many containers trapped at the port as a result of the action by the truckers have accumulated huge demurrage prompting the leadership of the freight forwarding associations to negotiate for waiver with the terminal operators.
According to investigations by Primetime Reporters, the freight forwarders were able to secure a seven days waiver from the management of Ports & Cargo terminal whereas all efforts to secure such waiver from TICT management met the rock hence the action by the freight forwarders yesterday.
Speaking on the development, the Secretary, National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF), Tincan Island Chapter, Mr. Emeka Nwosu stated that there had been series of complains in the past by the freight forwarders over high level of extortion and cumbersome state of processing documents at the TICT adding that whereas they had been able to secure a seven days waiver out of the nine days the action lasted from other terminal operators, TICT had refused to yield to all overtures made by the associations to get them to waive some days for them.
Nwosu informed that as a result of that, the leadership of ANLCA and NAGAFF met over the weekend and resolved to stop operation at this their billing and terminal Delivery Order office of the terminal.
“So, we were here early, as early as 5.30am to 6.00am, we already taken position here, stopping our members from going in to do any transaction with them. We are on ground, the team leaders of NAGAFF and ANLCA, Association of Registered Freight Forwarders of Nigeria and other members of the trade unions”, he said.
He accused staff of TICT of extorting money from freight forwarders before issuing them invoice and Terminal Delivery Order (TDO) even when such freight forwarders were not indebted to the terminal in anyway alleging that the least person who worked in the office go home with fat pockets every day because there was a chain of extortion, from the security officers to the highest staff in the establishment.
According to him,” Now, you don’t have access to even see the billing man, you have to pass your document to him through the security officer who will now collect a minimum of N1, 000 from you to pass your document in. He has no business whatsoever with your document, he doesn’t understand what is in the document, even in the face of any issue that calls for clarification, he cannot defend it. Because he did not give you access to go in there and meet the billing Manager or whoever, he will now turn it to say that he said you should bring money to access the account which is an unacceptable practice.
“Saturdays, they are opened for business, when you come here on Saturdays to pick your invoice or to pay, knowing fully well that banks don’t work on Saturdays; they will now ask you to go and bring draft on Saturday, where do they expect agents to go and obtain the draft? Meanwhile, there are provisions for them to take cash on Saturdays, they will now tell you that you should go and bring draft, that it is risky to take cash. That if you want them to take the cash and go and deposit in the bank, that you have to pay them. Somebody parted with as much as N20, 000 here last Saturday to take one invoice. Add up the expenses on one shipment, you now discover the pains people are going through here.
“Then that same payment that they don’t have draft for, there and then when you give them the money that you are parting with, you will now be given a draft. Where does the draft emanate from? From the same system as a result of their set of bottlenecks created to extort these innocent freight forwarders.
“Some of the came as early as 8.00am here, they will not resume work till about 9.00am, even by 9.00am, they will now compel them to go and queue up, pick numbers from number 1 to whatever, maybe 100 0r 200, then when they attend to one or two people, by 12.30pm, they go on break and spend one hour, thirty minutes and return and those for Jumat will go for Jumat prayer by 1.30pm to 2.00pm. When they come back by 2.15pm, they work till around 3.00pm to 4.00pm and they will tell you that they have closed. Meanwhile, they have not closed, they will now lock the door, creating room for the freight forwarders to buy time with money for reasons that are not their own”.
He however noted that a meeting was scheduled between the TICT management and the leadership of the associations at 11.00am same day to discuss ways of resolving the matter even as he said that the Management of TICT had been calling, requesting them to withdraw their men from the premises in order to give room for talks to go on.
Asked what they would be requesting at the meeting, he said,” First, TICT should introduce electronic billing system like what APMT is doing. At APMT, you can access your payment from anywhere; you can even access your invoice from your phone. You can go to any Café and access your invoice, even pay online, take your receipt, apply for TDO, no money will exchange hands. There should be electronic billing system and payment method.
“Secondly, the terminal should be made to function effectively, people will now write their TDO, you give them terminal delivery order to go and pick their container, only for them to get to the terminal and be made to lose man-hour, that will amount to them paying demurrage again. That has to stop. If they know they cannot handle the volume of vessels that come to their terminal, let them be open, stem some vessels out to another terminal. Then, whichever liner that they are managing their shipments as their terminal operator must have holding bay for empties”.
On his part, a chieftain of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Mr. Dele Iboma noted that while they were not interfering with the activities of the TICT staff, they however asked the freight forwarders to stop work until a meeting is held and they know the outcome of the meeting adding that they were in control of the situation, are in control of the situation at the moment.
“While we were here, we even discovered some anomalies going on here. We discovered that without parting with money, you cannot do any job here. A security man was caught this morning red handed who collected N5, 000 from an agent before action can be taken in processing his document. We caught him in the action and drew the attention of the CSO and the supervisor and they confronted him, the money was recovered from him and returned to the agents. We were told verbally that that man has been dismissed and we discovered that it was not just that security man; it is the general norm here.
“There is one Mr. Kenneth in Counter six that is very hard on agents, if you don’t part with money, he does not talk with anybody to the point that if you don’t pay money, he will be playing computer game during working hours, putting head phone on his ears to listen to music. I have a video recording of what is happening here. What agents go through here, I have it on my phone this morning, it’s like a market, agents falling over one another before they can have access because things are not being done normally.
“In addition to that, they are still operating manually instead of going electronic in the modern days of today. That is why this human contact is encouraging corruption. They don’t have POS machines, everything that is done here has to do with money and it encourages corruption”.
Asked what their next line of action will be if the outcome of the meeting turns negative, he replied,” We will go back to our leaders within the associations and know the next line of action but hopefully, we believe that they will be reasonable in meeting our demands at the end of the day”.
Meanwhile, our correspondent reported that at the end of the meeting between the TICT management and the leadership of the freight forwarding associations, it was agreed that a four day waiver be granted while the sixteen point issues raised by the freight forwarders against the terminal be resolved within two weeks.
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