Truck drivers operating at the nation's seaports are currently spoiling for a showdown with the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) over the agency's recent Memorandum of Understand (MoU) with the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) to commence nationwide enforcement of Minimum Standard of Safety and Road Worthiness ( MSSRW) for trucks coming into the port by March 1, 2017.
This is even as the truckers have decided to increase their charges to N100,000 for a 20-foot container and N150,000 for a 40ft container.
These were resolutions of a meeting of the truckers under the aegis of Committee of Truck Owners on Traffic Management and Rescue held in Apapa Lagos yesterday at the secretariat of Association of Maritime Truck Owners (AMARTO).
The truckers who trooped out in their numbers told Shipping Position Dailyexclusively called for the scrapping of the N10,000 truck standardisation fee being collected by the NPA, because, according to them, it amounts to double taxation as FRSC is also collecting revenue for road worthiness.
Public Relations Officer of the group; Comrade Ifeanyin Okwunife, in a chat with Shipping Position Daily lamented that double taxation and extortion at the ports is killing haulage business in Nigeria.
He noted that there are lots of extortion points around the port, especially coming from Mile 2 along Apapa-Oshodi expressway and the port, he said that truckers spend not less than N10,000 to bribe their way into the port.
Ekwunife however noted that even though truck owners are not kicking against standardisation of trucks, the template for the new implementation has to be stated clearly by the FRSC before the March 1st 2017 implementation day.
According to him, the truckers are equally confronted with the monetary attachment to the installation of speed limiters on all trucks by the FRSC.
"It all bores down to NPA's policy on minimum standard, we are not against minimum standard, we want to even keep our trucks at maximum standard, but the way NPA is going about it is what we are against, and the monetary attachment to it makes it a double taxation"
"The road safety must give us a template, is it the ones certified inside the port or the ones we collect from the state as road worthiness, the one from the state should render NPA N10,000 invalid and vice versa, it amounts to double taxation at this time of recession and at a time that tariff on haulage is very low because of low influx of importation"
"We are going to use money to install speed limiters and they can only work where we have good roads. We can't have speed limiters with the kind of roads we have here"
"The implementation should not be immediate; the sensitization should be going on while they are fixing the roads"
"For them (FRSC and NPA) they have fixed a date (March 1st 2017) our own is to either comply or not, NPA should have taken the initiative to take us into consideration before making these policies, they supposed to get our own contributions" he said
The truckers unanimously agreed that their charges are currently too low and there is need to increase it in line with current realities at the port.
Shipping Position Daily recalls that the Managing Director, Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Ms Hadiza Bala Usman had recently given March 1, 2017 deadline to the Federal Road Safety Commission ( FRSC) for the enforcement of Minimum Standard of Safety and Road Worthiness
for all the trucks entering the nation’s six major ports.
Speaking during the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding ( MoU) with the FRSC in Lagos, Ms Usman said the NPA had the responsibility to protect lives and properties of all stakeholders accessing its services by ensuring that all articulated vehicles and trucks which on daily basis freight containers and assorted bulk cargoes to different parts of the country from the ports meet the required minimum safety standards.
She said NPA was collaborating with the FRSC as part of efforts to put lasting solutions to the Oshodi-Apapa expressway gridlock.
To ensure full compliance, NPA, she said, was collaborating with the FRSC and other safety enforcement agencies to achieve safety standard for trucks accessing the ports by adopting the Road Traffic Safety Standardisation Scheme (RTSSS), which include regular inspection and certification of the fleet.
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