A former General Manager in the Nigerian Ports Authourity (NPA) Mr. Muhammad Bulangu, has said that the government has no role in providing truck parks for the trucks flooding the ports access roads.
Bulangu, who said this, last week in a chat with Shipping Position Daily in Lagos, maintained that it wrong for anybody to think that the government should provide parking space for them, even as he argued that trucking is a personal business and the owners should be able to provide parks for their trucks.
He reiterated that this has been his position right from the time he was in the service of the NPA, adding that just like transport companies provide parking spaces for their cars, truckers should be able to provide spaces for their trucks.
He however said that truckers do not have any reason to park on the roads because they were not provided with a parking space.
“I see no role of the government in providing parking spaces for trucks because the trucks are personal businesses. Because if you buy a car you should know where to park, this has been my position when I was in service and that position remains”, he stated.
“If you look at the major transport companies, they have parking slots for their vehicles; if you see their vehicles on the roads it is because it is coming to do something. They can’t come and park on the roads because they don’t have parks. So the other truckers should have their parking slots, do they expect the government to provide parks for them while they are in business, why should the government provide for them? Is there anywhere in this world where such thing happens, there is no where nobody can tell me that the government provides parking spaces for trucks”, he argued further.
He also advised the shipping lines to be ready to take back their empty containers.
“Sometimes when people talk about shipping lines and terminal operators providing holding bays, it makes me laugh. The port is a transit area, it is not a warehouse and when you talk about the terminal operators not providing holding bays, is it the terminal operators that are brining in the containers or the shipping companies. It is the work of the shipping lines to take back their empty containers and not the terminal operators, the terminal operators just like what the NPA does is a warehouse man. And the role of the warehouse man is to take the cargo and keep it till the owner comes and when the owner comes, he delivers the cargo. The shipping companies are the owners of the empty containers, so it is their role to look for how to take the empty containers back”, he told our corresoondent.
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