Customs licensed agents under the auspices of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) have accused both the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and the TinCan Island Container Terminal (TICT) of complicity in the parking of trucks at the gate of the terminal.
The Tin Can Island chapter chairman of ANLCA, Mr. Segun Oduntan, who said this last week when he led some members of the newly -formed ad-hoc committee on the traffic gridlock on a courtesy visit to NPA, said the gate area should be a flagging area and not a truck park.
He however disclosed that collaboration is in high gear between the agents and some group of experts to introduce Ubber platform in the trucking industry.
He advised that “the leadership of truckers associations should talk to their members, if they have any issue with anybody, they should resolve it, that place is not a parking area, because it is going block other people. But at the same time, maybe as well you need to talk to the management to know if they have to give you towing van just to take these trucks off this access roads"
According to him, the people causing trouble in the trucking industry are mostly people with few trucks.
"As I am talking to you now, we are planning to do Ubber for trucks and the people are ready. We are going to talk to truck owners not truck drivers. The people causing problems here are the people who have only one truck"
Explaining further on the modalities for operation the yet to be introduced Ubber platform for trucks he said, “after talking to people who have invested in buying trucks, they will talk to people who have at least five trucks. Once an agent presents his TDO, there is going to be a platform inventory have the TDO you will enter it in the platform and submit through the shipping companies"
"Once they load, you will be asked to pay and the cargo will be delivered to you, you can also be monitoring your cargo. They are ready to provide assistance to people who are serious in the business and within six months they will provide new trucks"
"They don't even need the approval of NPA just in that platform"
Oduntan said that the volume of cargoes moving via badges have increased.
Meanwhile in his response, the Head of Ports Security, Tin-Can Island Container Terminal (TICT), Mr. Akindele Olajide, accused truckers of abandoning their trucks in the terminal.
He maintained that they bring the trucks out to the gate to pave way for those whose agents are around.
"Most of the truckers just abandon their trucks and leave it there. So most times we bring them out keep them here especially for those ones that are blocking the road that is the reason why you are seeing some of them here. Sometimes we allow them to remain there in order to pave way for those that their agents are around"
He thanked the committee for the visit, even as he blamed alerts from the Customs Intelligent Unit as one of the major challenges they are facing at the terminal.
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