The Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT) Nigeria has blamed the incessant combustion, fire outbreaks and attendant loss of lives and properties emanating from petroleum tankers on the quality of the metal sheet used in constructing the trucks.
The President, CILT Nigeria, Mr. Ibrahim Jibril who stated this on the sideline of the just concluded 2018 National Conference and Annual General Meeting of the Institute in Lagos with the theme, “Trucks in Freight Logistics System: Issues in Nigerian Economic Development, said that the quality of the trucks that are being used to transport petroleum products in the country were questionable.
Jibril added that there were cases where trucks were loaded with petroleum products and they kept leaking as they go along the road even as he wondered how they were loaded in the tank farms in the first if they were not good vehicles and allowed to get out of the tank farms in that condition.
In his words,” There is a standard construction requirement. For example, the metal sheet that is used in constructing these tankers should be at least 5mm gauge metal sheet. What is being used today? Go around and you will see that 3mm is being used which is below standard. Even the construction of manhole, there is a standard that is allowable for it in such a way that when a truck topples over, nothing will come out of that truck, you can come and evacuate your product without losing it and without causing danger to the community or the surroundings that it happened.
“But now, even without it toppling over, petroleum product is coming out of the manhole and that is source of danger. Trucks that are moving with exhaust that is on high temperature, you can imagine what will happen when you have a truck that is leaking and leakage is close to exhaust which is at a very high temperature and in an environment that there is a lot of oxygen, what comes next? Combustion! And that is why we continue to have fire outbreaks”.
He however suggested that the situation called for all stakeholders in the road sector coming together to proffer solutions to the problems bedeviling the sector adding that the situation had degenerated to a level where everybody must be listened to and stakeholders collaborating to end the menace as according to him, no one can do it alone.
“There is no one person that knows it all. The first thing I will advise will be that we bring all the stakeholders together and let us hear what the challenges of each and every person are because this is like a multimodal arrangement; the maritime is there, the road transport is there, why don’t we bring the rail transport into it so that we address the issue.
“We have tank farm operators here, those are very key stakeholders that should come into this situation, they should come and we discuss with them, all of us will come together, if the NPA is doing it right, what are the tank farm owners doing? Are they getting it right? If the investors have invested, what are their managers doing within the tank farm?”, he queried.
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