The National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) has said that the Port Consultative Council (PCC) headed by Otunba Kunle Folarin has become moribund even as it called for total overhaul of the body.
The National President of NAGAFF, Chief Increase Uche who stated this in a telephone interview with our correspondent in Lagos recently said that NAGAFF had been harping on the need for collaboration of government agencies but nobody was listening to that saying “all our hope was that that very consultative forum should have been for the entire agencies in the port.”
Uche continued, “Last time, we started the Maritime Expo that was almost bringing all the agencies together, that one failed but we still hear of this very consultative forum headed by Otunba Folarin and what they are doing, we don’t really understand.
“Having a consultative forum means that these are the people that supposed to provide professional advice to ensure that there is collaboration, look at what is going on in the industry to ensure that every player in the industry is evenly represented, that there should be mutual relationship that should exist between all the parties.
“But I want to believe now that the consultative forum has become moribund. So, there is need for us to overhaul it, injecting fresh blood that will know what we want and they will be able to know how we will achieve that.
“In a nutshell, it is for us to determine what our port should look like in the nearest future. We are talking of the Continental Free Trade Area agreement, if we allow the port to continue the way it is going now, it will be a very big problem because we will not meet up with the challenges that will be facing us among other states in Africa.”
Meanwhile, attempts to get the reaction of Otunba Kunle Folarin proved abortive as his phone line was not going through as at the time of filing this report.
Photo: The National President of NAGAFF, Chief Increase Uche.
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