A clearing agent; Mr. Jonathan Owoh, has advised that for the perennial traffic congestion along the Apapa Oshodi expressway to be properly tackled, shipping lines should be mandated to sail out with the same number of containers they bring into the country.
Owoh, who gave this advice last week in a chat with Shipping Position Daily in Lagos, also lauded the former Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo Iweala for introducing that strategy, saying that it went a long way to tackle the challenge of ports congestion.
He condemned the situation where some vessels after discharging at the ports will leave without picking any empty container.
He argued that, “the issue is not with the trucks, the issue is that shipping companies don’t have holding bays where they can be dropping these empty containers depending on the time they will return their empties, because they don’t have holding bays”.
He recalled that, “when Okonjo Iweala was here, she made it compulsory that if any ship comes in with 500 containers, it must go back with the same quantity of empty containers, in that way they will decongest the ports. But after a while they relaxed”.
According to him, “they (shipping lines) have started doing whatever they want, that is why you see congestion here. You see a ship come in with 2000 containers, but when it is leaving, it will go with 500”.
He also lamented alleged extortion by some shipping companies and terminal operators in the country.
Making an example of a terminal operator, he said: “The shipping companies are the owners of the containers; they are the people bringing in the containers, while TICT are the custodian of the containers; they will keep it in their custody until the containers are cleared”
“Shipping companies charge demurrage while TICT charges for storage. So the shipping companies after 11days charges over N20,000 daily, some shipping companies give 21 days while some 3 to 5 days as the case may be claiming that the authority to give waiver must come from their principal abroad”.
Giving further insight he added that: “The moment they ship the container here with either TICT or any of the terminals, they will give you three days free and within this three days the ships are still discharging and the first five days they will start collecting N1800 for a 40ft container. The next five days is N8,000 for terminal storage, the moment it clicks to 11 days, it becomes N12, 000 daily at the terminal”
“If you add it to N20, 000 you will know how much we are paying daily and this is not all the charges; this is just demurrage and storage. In the case of that TICT, they have another terminal at Kirikiri, initially when that terminal started, if a ship is allocated to go that place, they will not charge you until they transfer the containers there, until they see the container there that is when they will start charging storage. But after a while, the moment the ships discharges, they will wait for three days and they will start charging you which is not good and you can’t even have access to the container. You can’t even examine the container and they will be charging you no matter how long the container stays there”.
He also blamed the government agencies responsible for regulating these firms for not doing what they are supposed to do.
“I have receipt now of about over N500, 000 to them as storage charge. It is their (terminal operator) responsibility to transfer the containers there and not the responsibility of the agent and they are not supposed to charge people for that. The people that are supposed to supervise that, are not doing anything”
“If you look around you see empty container everywhere if you release from there they will continue to debit you until you return the empty container and you see what is happening on the roads”, he concluded.
Discussion about this post