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Story by Dili Utomi.
The perennial traffic situation around the ports access areas which has brought untold hardships and economic losses to a lot of businesses as well as the country in general is daily drawing the ire of both the private and public sector workers. A stakeholders meeting was held Thursday between the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) on one hand and the various private businesses operating within and around the Ports which include the terminal operators, shipping companies, freight forwarders and truck operators on the other hand.
The meeting was chaired by the Apapa Port Manager, Mr. Charles Okaga with the traffic manager of the Port, Mr. Sylvester Egede supporting. The meeting was a follow up to the previous one held over a week ago as a mechanism for reviewing the resolutions reached at the previous meeting.
The representative of the Association of Maritime Truck Owners (AMATO) Mohammed Bala Sani who was one of the persons that spoke for the truckers noted that the enforcement of laid down and agreed traffic procedures have rather become problematic, that the security agencies encourage shunting by trucks and that space racketeering is so rampant making it almost impossible for there to be orderliness.
Another trucker representing National Association of Maritime Truck Owners, Moruf Raheem indicated that his Association is organising a task force to help address the traffic situations the security agencies have failed in their duty.
The operators of the eto traffic application software meant for traffic control in and around the Port areas and on behalf of the NPA, the Truck Transit Park, represented by its operations manager, Irabor Akonoman indicated that they get a rough estimate of 250 requests from truckers to access the Ports on daily basis and clear them for that purpose, but that accessing the Port by these trucks is usually herculean tasks in nature.
The various terminal operators with the Apapa Port area such as AP Miller Terminal, Eco Support and ENL say that they can receive about 50 trucks with empty containers everyday and this drew the angts of most of the other stakeholders in the meeting.
The Apapa Port Manager, noting the tensed and emotional atmosphere quickly interjected by admonishing the terminal operators especially the APMT to know that their performance so far in this area is low, he appealed to their honest revelation of the contending issues that will not allow them to work more efficiently like in other places, he told them that Nigeria is all that we have and so should work for her greatness.
The port manager also indicated that the issue of police and other security agencies’ extortion from truckers around the Port access road areas has been escalated up to the presidency and shall soon be resolved.
He also asked the TTP to address the issue of the abuse of ticketing processes, the direct delivery and virtual tickets and to find a way of introducing barcode for vehicles accessing the ports. He also chided the truckers for the uncooperative attitude of some of them which also result in the traffic lockjam and asked them to go on ahead and use their task force to help remedy the traffic situation.
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