There are indications that the Association of Nigeria Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) and the Association of Maritime Truck Owners (AMARTO) are collaborating on how to resolve the chaotic traffic situation on the Apapa-Oshodi expressway leading to the ports in Lagos.
Shipping Position Daily learnt yesterday that the two groups are strategising on how to deploy the use of call-up system for trucks in order to ensure that trucks that do not have any business at the port do not come around.
Chairman of AMARTO, Chief Remi Ogungbemi confirmed the imminent collaboration to our correspondent, saying that various logistics expert companies have been assembled to make presentations on how to find a lasting solution to the traffic menace.
Shipping Position Daily gathered that the first meeting of the group is supposed to hold at the ANLCA national secretariat in Lagos next Tuesday.
Ogungbemi however noted that the stakeholders do not have the financial muscle to provide palliative measures on the dilapidated port access roads.
According to him, it is only the government that has the means to provide the much-needed palliative to fix the Apapa-Oshodi road.
"We are working on how to use modern technology to regulate the movement so that all the trucks would not be coming to the port at the same time. The technology experts want to make power point presentation to ANLCA members and this is being championed by AMARTO", he confirmed.
"Before we commence, we are sensitising other stakeholders so that they can key into the arrangement.
The meeting was shifted till next week Tuesday so that all the chairmen of the chapters can be on ground" he said.
Continuing, the trucker lamented that "the palliative measure has degenerated to a large extent that we cannot shoulder, rather, we can only do little that we can, and the little we are doing does not even have any significant effect, it is only the people in authority that can make a serious palliative that will have an impact"
"We don't have the financial power to make the palliative that can address the situation"
He also alleged that some stakeholders in the port are benefitting from the traffic chaos in Apapa and that such people would not buy into the project.
According to him, "they would want the suffering to continue, they would criticize what we are doing because the problem we are going through on that road is a pot of soup to some people, but this would not deter us from moving ahead"
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