… I am not aware, says NPA Spokesman, Onyemekara
Former Sole Administrator of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents, ANLCA, Otunba Abdulazeez Babatunde Mukaila has said that the the Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA is taking steps to implement a policy that will make any truck that spends a night inside the port to part with a whopping sum of Two Hundred and Fifty Thousand Naira (N250,000) as penalty.
Mukaila who stated this in an interview with our correspondent in Lagos recently, was reacting to the rising cost of doing business at the Nigerian ports.
He said that the policy, if true, needed to be reviewed as according to him, there were so many factors that would make a truck to stay overnight at the ports which is beyond what the truck driver cannot control adding that the Authority would be unfair to those drivers who out of no mistake of theirs were meant to cough out such a humongous amount.
His words, “The Nigerian Ports Authority is saying that once a truck slept inside the port overnight, it’s going to pay the sum of N250,000 officially. NPA is coming up with that and there you have a customs officer who may just go out of the gate and everybody is waiting and he holds the signature to himself and for no fault of anybody, the truck sleeps overnight and it has to pay N250,000. Too many bottlenecks.
“The Association of Maritime Truck Owners will enter into a contract with you, this is the amount to be paid, after loading, as a standing tradition which is not practicable anywhere in the world, the truck owner wants money paid before embarking on the journey. And if Nigerian banks have a network issue, you make a transfer and the money did not hit his account, the drive will remain in the port and sleep there. And then, the NPA will move in and bill the cargo N250,000.
“They just need to call a stakeholders’ meeting and discuss this. Let us rearrange and recalibrate the process for easy implementation. You don’t hire a truck owner that doesn’t have a yard or a truck owner who wants one hundred percent payment without even exiting the port and after exit, if anything happens, it’s none of his business.”
Asked if there is any circular or public notice to this effect, Mukaila who is also the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Mickey Excellency Nigeria Limited had this to say, “I have not seen it, we were only discussing it very strongly yesterday but this is coming. I wonder if it’s not going to be part of the policies to be rolled out this March. It’s coming and they can’t deny it, you can make your findings.
“They don’t care, they just want to move in, you exit AP Moller and in transit to the gate, something happened, even the customs Enforcement who has nothing to do with cargo procedure park trucks on the road, hold the container down, and once you slept, because somebody stopped your container as an Enforcement officer, you part with N250,000. This seriously calls for a review otherwise, many will run out of business soon.”
Reacting, the General Manager, Corporate and Strategic Communications, NPA, Mr. Ikechukwu Onyemekara denied any knowledge of the planned N250,000 penalty for trucks that stay overnight at the ports.
He went ahead to say that whenever NPA wanted to introduce any policy, it used to call stakeholders meeting to educate and properly sensitize them on the nitty gritty of the said policy before commencement.
“Since this has not happened, it remains a rumour and I am not aware of it”, Onyemekara said.
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