The Vice President of the National Road and Transport Owners (NARTO) Alhaji Abdullahi Inuwa has blamed the negligence on the part of the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) for the persistent traffic gridlock experience in the Tin Can and Apapa axis of the state.
In a chat with Shipping Position Daily correspondent, Inuwa said the department is issuing license to tank farms owners without considering if many of these tank farms meet the requirement stipulated by the law for ownership of tank farms.
He informed that there are over six industrial companies, 24 tank farms between Sunrise bus stop to Tin Can Island Port which is less than 15 kilometers.
He said failure of the tank farm owners to provide holding bays for their tankers has made of the tanker drivers to resolve to parking on the roads, adding that out of 24 tankers, if nine were to discharge their products at the same time, he said not less than 500 tanker drivers will be queuing up on the roads to load products from the depots.
According to him, “DPR who are licensing tank farms are not considering if these tank farms have holding bays, the law says you must provide holding bays where they can harbor the trucks for loading before they are allowed to go but most of the depots have no holding bays outside their tank farms.
“From sunrise to Tin Can we have about 24 tank farms deports, and if about nine depots are having products to discharge which means about 500 tankers are coming at once to load products.
“Because of these, every day we witness two to three tankers falling, which means that the drivers are finding it difficult to cross due to the bad roads and the construction going on in that axis.
At the same time this is the place where the five containers terminals are using alongside about five to six industrial companies within the axis so it is not out of place if there is traffic in that area, they call it port economic zone”.
