The Shippers’ Association of Lagos State (SALS) has called on the Federal Government to scrap the Standards Organization of Nigeria Conformity Assessment Programme, also known as SONCAP, saying that it not relevant for the assessment of goods imported into the country.
The SONCAP is a product conformity scheme whose objective is to help ensure that products exported to Nigeria meet minimum standard. This will help ensure that Nigerian consumers are not exposed to potentially unsafe and sub-standard goods.
President of SAL; Reverend Jonathan Nicole made the call for the scrapping of SONCAP in an exclusive chat with Shipping Position Daily yesterday, in Lagos on the side line of an event put together by Portbizness Communications Limited.
According to him, SONCAP negates trade facilitation and creates unnecessary delay in the clearance of consignment.
The shippers’ association boss alleged that issues of the SONCAP certificate have created bottlenecks in the ports operations, adding that procedure is cumbersome and slows down efforts of importers to receive their consignments on time.
He added that the shippers will resist the issue of SONCAP certificate, even as he stressed the need for government to intervene now.
He further alleged that most shippers have lost their clients because of the delay of SONCAP issuance certificate by the Standards organisation of Nigeria (SON ).
Nicole also alleged that SON charges N3500 for each certificate for 20-foot container while N7000 is collected on 40-foot container ".
"Scrapping of SONCAP certificate will make the bottleneck at the ports to stop and we all know that it is not everybody that is computer literate at the moment , therefore, in our own view we think that the SONCAP certificate is unnecessary and we are calling on the government to scrap it"
"When we talk of standards we want SON to go into our industry and get themselves involved in the standards of goods produced in this country to meet Nigerian standard"
"We believe that SON was set up to regulate standard and it has left its primary function ,it has intervened in the port system for finished goods and not only that we are resisting the SONCAP now, because when you pay for SONCAP it takes weeks before it gets to the importers" ,he alleged.
He however blamed Nigerian government for trading with India and China, saying that most of the sub-standard goods flooding Nigerian markets are from the two countries.
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