The Council of Maritime Truck Unions and Associations(COMTUA) has said that the association had submitted a total number of 56 truck parks to the management of the Nigerian Ports Authority(NPA) to assist in the efforts to address the perennial traffic gridlock on the axis into Lagos port.
The Head of Operations of COMTUA, Alhaji Abdullahi Inuwa who disclosed this last week in a chat with Shipping Position Daily in Lagos, also said that out of the 56 truck parks submitted by the association, only 33 were selected and approved by both NPA and the Nigeria Shippers Council (NSC).
According to him, two of the truck parks have been designated by the two agencies as suitable for use for call ups.
“We at COMTUA we had initially submitted 56 truck parks to complement the efforts of the NPA and out of the 56 only 33 parks were selected and approved by both the Nigerian Shippers Council (NSC) and NPA”
“Even some of those truck parks; two of them are being used to raise call up where the trucks can raise their call up, they will leave the parks and come to Lilypond. It is in Lilypond that they will now prepare their call up to the terminals in Apapa”, Inuwa said.
Explaining further, he said that the parks are located in different parts of Lagos state.
“The truck parks are located in different areas, there are some along Ijora axis, some along Iganmu side and the other ones along Kirikiri and Sunrise, these are the places where these trucks are”
“If anybody doubts that there is nothing like that, he can speak with the flagging manager or the Shippers Council. We have also spoken with the terminal operators and shipping companies to make their works more effective”, he added.
But reacting to this, the Head Corporate and Strategic Communications of NPA, Engineer Adams, Jatto, said he is not aware of the parks by truckers, even as he said that some of the truckers claim to have private parks for their trucks.
He however maintained that the only truck par he is aware of is the one at Lilypond and Tin Can.
“I am not aware of that, if the truckers claim that they have some of these terminals. The ones I can confidently tell you are the Lilypond and that of Tin Can. The truckers claim to have some of these parks for their trucks”
Meanwhile an attempt to get any comment from the Nigerian Shippers Council (NSC) was not fruitful, even though the Executive Secretary; Barrister Hassan Bello said he was going to forward the documents to our correspondent.
However, attempts to get the document were not fruitful as at the time of filling this report.
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