About six years after government embraced port concession and stripped the Nigerian Ports Authourity (NPA) of its master stevedore role, the agency’s managing director, Engr Omar Suleiman has disclosed that contrary to fears that were being entertained at that time, the exercise has created a multiple jobs in the sector.
About six years after government embraced port concession and stripped the Nigerian Ports Authourity (NPA) of its master stevedore role, the agency’s managing director, Engr Omar Suleiman has disclosed that contrary to fears that were being entertained at that time, the exercise has created a multiple jobs in the sector.
Engr Suleiman disclosed in statement issue d by NPA on Wednesday that port concession has generated an employment for more than 15,000 people in the nation’s seaports so far, a figure that is higher than the total workforce of NPA before concession.
According to the organisation, the port concession programme led to the emergence of 25 terminal operators under lease, operate and transfer (LOT) agreement and one Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) initiative.
In the statement, NPA further stressed that the LOT and BOT policies were adopted so as to engender efficiency, competitiveness and international best practices in port management.
“By the concession programme, the functions of Nigerian Ports Authority are; pilotage, port manning, licensing and control, marine services, technical regulations and channel management”
Harping on other benefits of concessioning within the ambits of the new roles of NPA, it said further that the management of the agency has “embarked on massive capital and maintenance dredging of our channels with the engagement of world class dredging companies, Lagos Channel Management (LCM) for Lagos channels and Bonny Channel Company (BCC) for bonny channels.
According to NPA the immediate effect of the dredging exercise is that Nigerian ports have started receiving larger vessels of above 232.33 meters with capacity of 4,500 TEU, s requiring draught 13.5 meters.
One of the first set of shipping lines to take advantage of thee deeper draught is Maersk which has deployed its WAFMAX vessels; “Maersk Calabar and Maersk Conakry; the 250 meters long vessel requiring 13.5 meters draught to Nigerian ports, the statement added.
“The terminal operators, in keeping faith with the concession agreement have invested in cargo handling equipment with a view to improving delivery operations”.
Giving specific details of the level of investments by the terminal operators, NPA disclosed that, The Port and Terminal Multiservice Limited (PTML) for instance has invested more than $100million in infrastructural development, while the Port and Terminal Operation (PTOL) has investments in excess of N3.2 billion. Similarly ENL consortium has invested Euros7 Million and N1 billion on equipment.
The agency also singled out INTELS in Onne port in Rivers state has invested over $4 billon and the Apapa Bulk Terminal Limited which has also procured a single new cement loader worth $5 million.
Still reeling out statistics of terminal operators’ investments, NPA quoted the Chief Executive Officer of APM Terminal, Kim Fejfer as saying that the company has invested about N31 billion in upgrading and modernizing the Apapa Container Terminal in the last six years, with an additional N20 billion investment in the pipeline over the next three years.
“These investments by the NPA and terminal operators have no doubt contributed to the increase in Ship traffic and cargo throughput at the Ports”, it stated, even as it added that, “available statistics show that the number of vessels that called at the ports pre- concession 2006 rose from 3,689 vessels to 5327 vessels in 2011 while the total Gross Registered Tonnage (GRT) increased from 63,267,047 metric tons in 2006 to 122,831,704 metric tons in 2011.”
The statement quoted the organisation’s managing director, Omar Suleiman as saying that NPA “has made remarkable progress since the inception of the concession programme.”
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