In a bid to fasten the process of vehicle clearance at its terminal, Ports and Terminal Multipurpose Limited (PTML), said that it has started moving vehicles to its bonded terminal at Mile 2 by the use of barges to beat the traffic gridlock.
Managing Director, Grimaldi Agency, Mr. Ascanio Russo, who disclosed this last week during a chat with newsmen at the terminal, also said that the barges can carry up to 60 vehicles at a time, and the company operates up to five barges daily.
He also said that the barely few weeks since the use of barges started, the terminal has been able to discharge up to 400 vehicles to its Mile 2 bonded terminal.
He explained that, “the customer does not have to come to the port. The barges will pick the cargo from the terminal and deliver the cargo at Mile 2 terminal for the customers. We just started the operation of barges a week ago and so far we have been able to discharge 400 containers off the terminal without facing delay of trucks coming into the port to carry containers. Before now, it used to take a week for trucks to reach the terminal and take containers out of the port, but with the introduction of barges, we discharged many containers daily without seeing the owners’’.
He said that the terminal had been running on gas generator to power its facilities, saying that using gas generator was economical than using diesel.
Speaking further, he said that activities in the terminal are restricted, and that is why you can only see few people around inside the terminal.
“As you can see everything in this terminal is restricted, so you can see a few people around, we do most things online. We have discharged over 1000 vehicle and we transfer them through barges to our bonded terminal at Mile 2. The barge carries up to 60 vehicles and it goes like five times daily. And that helps a lot in the reduction of the number of hours we spend on the road due to traffic”
He also complained that due to the nature of Nigerian ports, many vehicles arrive at Cotonou ports than the quantity that arrive at Nigerian ports.
He also said that the terminal delivers more than 1000 vehicles yearly.
“We deliver more 1,000 vehicles yearly and we have over 600 overtime vehicles in our terminal here, we are waiting for customs directive. Importation of vehicles dropped very well last year because of duties payable on vehicles and government policies” he concluded.
Discussion about this post