A chieftain of the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF); Mr Ugochukwu Nnadi has blamed 20% of the problems in the nation’s freight forwarding industry to lack of proper training.
Nnadi who said this last week in a chat with Shipping Position Daily in Lagos, also reiterated the need for freight forwarders to be trained and retrained so that they can be up to date on what is happening in the industry.
He maintained that the types of issues freight forwarders take to customs is as a result of lack of training which according to him, leads to job delays.
“You see some freight forwarders and the type of issues they take to customs, they delay jobs because what they can do themselves they will take it to customs and start disturbing the officer that has something else to do”
“But if they are properly trained to know what they should do, about 20% of the problems will be solved. When you remove 20% of the problems we have you know we will go a long way”
Reacting on the issue of collecting of the Practitioners Operation Fee (POF) by the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) he accused the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) of not fully implementing all the aspect of the Customs Excise and Management Act (CEMA).
He explained that some percentage of the all the duties collected by the service should be given to freight forwarders.
“The POF is long overdue to be collected, how can you be working and you are not being paid. Are you aware that in CEMA there is a percentage of the duty that an agent should collect and it should be given back to the agents. But the customs have implemented that aspect of CEMA they take the whole thing. This is just a token that should be paid into the pulse of CRFFN and from there we will also be trained it is just a contribution for us so it is worthwhile”
Nnadi argued that CRFFN is not an agency of government, stressing that it is even wrong for the government to dictate how CRFFN should be operated.
“CRFFN is not an agency of the government just like bodies like the ICAN is it a government agency. Saving that they have 17 appointees from the government and 15 from the practitioners is just the misinterpretation of the law”
“You know in Nigeria everybody does what he/she wants to do because the person is in authority. So for government to even dictate how CRFFN should be operated is wrong because it is not a government agency” he concluded.
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