ANLCA Battles TICT, Others Over Easter Holiday Demurrage

The Tin Can Island Chapter of the Association of Nigeria Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) is currently battling with port concessionaires; Tincan Island Container Terminal (TICT) and Mid-Maritime Services Terminal over the terminals' demand for payment of demurrage on cargoes during the last Easter holidays.

Vice Chairman of the chapter; Barrister Ada Akpunonu who spoke exclusively with Shipping Position Daily in her office on Tuesday disclosed that ANLCA had last week written a letter to all the concessionaires demanding a three days waiver on demurrage during the Easter holidays.

This according to her, is logical because many of the terminals were not open to work during the holidays and ANLCA had delegated some of its members to go round and monitor the situation.

But not rendered.

Akpunonu said that: "When government declared public holiday, most of the terminal operators did surprisingly, she alleged that, while other terminals accepted the letter and complied; only TICT and Mid Maritime failed to comply and are currently demanding payment for services not work and they are charging demurrage, a terminal like TICT is claiming that they worked on Saturday, what about people that want to pay, were there banks to pay their charges, even their accounting section did not operate".

"We wrote to all the terminals about the holiday waiver, most of them did, but we learnt that TICT is saying that they worked on Saturday and Friday, they did not inform us, and we want to know the banks they made available to collect their ‘debit note’ on their behalf because we sent out people to go round".

"The Mid Maritime did not even comply at all, even to receive the letter was difficult for them, they started charging us just like that" she lamented.

She alleged that the two terminals fingered in the allegation do not have enough space for cargo operations, especially to discharge empty containers.

The association lamented the hardship its members are forced to go through at Mid Maritime, because the terminal does not have adequate cargo handling equipment.

She lamented that freight forwarders usually have difficulties in dropping their empty containers off at the terminals, a situation which leads to long queue of container-laden trucks along the Oshodi-Apapa expressway.

"There are so many avenues through which these people are ripping us off, empty containers stay on trucks without space to drop them, they don't have holding bays", she alleged further.

The association is demanding that TICT waive three days; Friday, Saturday and Monday.
When contacted, the Terminal Manager of TICT; Mr Richard Akibosotu told our correspondent that , he was not in a position to say anything about the development, he referred our correspondent to the concessionaire’s head office.