The President of Barge Operators Association of Nigeria, and Chief Executive Officer of Connect Rail Service (CRS); Mr. Edeme Kelikume has indicted terminal operator; APM Terminal Apapa of frustrating movement of cargoes by barges from the port.
The movement of cargoes by barges is meant to serve as alternative way of decongesting the port and the access road in line with efforts to encourage intermodal transportation in cargo evacuation
Recall that the Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Hadiza Bala Usman had flagged -off the first movement of export cargoes with barges from the Ikorodu Lighter Terminal to APM Terminal in Apapa by CRS Logistics Limited last year with the hope that the port will be decongested with the initiative.
However, speaking recently with our correspondent, the President of the barge operators informed that APM Terminal has not given enough support for the movement of cargoes by barges, Mr Kelikume singled out Port and Cargo Handling Services at Tin Can port as the most supportive terminal when it comes to movement of cargoes by barges.
According to him “APMT has not given enough support, not just APMT, but I will single out Port and Cargo, as one of the terminals that has given full support to barge operators and to a lesser extent, ENL.
“Most especially Port and Cargo, they have dedicated a crane for barge operations, but for APMT initially we were given full support about the operation, but lately they’ve had their own challenges, so barges are not calling at the terminal as frequent as they want to, they have not given enough window for the operation”, he alleged.
When asked what the association is doing to address the issue, the president stated that the association has written to NPA and APM Terminal to address the issues.
“We have written to APMT and NPA on that and recently, I am aware that the MD of NPA visited the terminal and these are issues that were discussed in other to decongest the port” he said.
He informed that about 200 to 500 containers are moved averagely on a daily basis while noting that since the movement of cargoes by barges began, there has only been one incident of fallen container, in the last one year, adding that over 100,000 containers have been ferried in the last one year.
“We’ve had only one recorded incidents to the best of my knowledge where a container fell into the water. And when you look at what we've done in the past one year, we’ve done almost 100,000, so if one out of 100,000 containers recorded; I think that's quite small compared to what has been done.
“However, safety and security measures have been put in place by the barge association, by operators, by NPA, NIWA and all stakeholders, essentially to ensure zero accidents”, he said.
He urged the government to look into inland waterways as a mode of sustainable transportation for the country.
“We expect more consolidation we expect governments to look into inland waterways as a mode of sustainable transportation for the country, especially for heavy cargo.
“We expect the government to start working on the dredging of the upper Niger, so that we can extend this barge movement as we are doing in Lagos, all the way down to Lokoja where Northern bound traffic can originate and terminate from”, he said.
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