National President of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA); Prince Olayiwola Shittu has challenged government agencies in the maritime sector to come up with resources to ensure that freight forwarders operating within the port system are well trained and brought up to international standard.
National President of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA); Prince Olayiwola Shittu has challenged government agencies in the maritime sector to come up with resources to ensure that freight forwarders operating within the port system are well trained and brought up to international standard.
Shittu in a chat with Shipping Position Daily last week in Lagos revealed that government agencies including the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA); the Nigerian Port Authority (NPA) and the Nigeria Shippers’ Council get yearly budget from the Federal Government for stakeholders’ training and capacity building within the sector, but expressed shock that the money is not being used for this purpose.
He argued that, “most of these government departments have budget for training and I continue to tell them that unless they are ready to train the freight forwarders they will always find it difficult to have smooth operations in the port”.
“We are not even asking any of them to give us the cash, we identify a programme, we give you the means and the budget, you finance it directly and our people will go for training” Shittu said.
He lamented that the association currently does not have reliable means of getting revenue to send its members for continuous training so as to bring them to international standard he added that those who have been attending foreign training which the association has been undergoing recently have been doing so from their personal pockets.
But for the training to transcend to the chapter levels, Shittu solicited that government’s intervention is necessary because, according to him, many of ANLCA members cannot afford the training on their own.
He stressed that the NIMASA, NPA and Shippers’ Council have these funds budgeted for training, but lamented that they usually limit their capacity building exercise to only members of their staff, which according to him is totally wrong.
“First of all we do not have guaranteed means of revenue earning, our members do not want to pay, we are not like organizations whereby if you don’t pay there will be sanction, and what is the sanction? If you ask somebody to leave ANLCA because he cannot pay money, he has other associations to go; the attraction is the difference between us and some others”.
“CRFFN is not a training body, the job of CRFFN is to accredit training institutions, if ANLCA wants to send 100 people to Institute of Freight Forwarders, the CRFFN will not pay for it, and when you ask members to come and pay, they will tell you they don’t have the money”.
“The only way to encourage them is for government departments to put resources together and pay for it and we will make it compulsory for our members to attend or else they won’t be allowed to operate”.
“NIMASA, Shipper’s Council and NPA all have it, but rather than use it to train stakeholders they will limit it to their own staff, what is the staff strength of NIMASA compared to 6,000 freight forwarders”.
“Those that attend training in ANLCA are those that can afford to pay from their pocket, nobody is going to pay for those at the chapters unless there is intervention” Shittu maintained.
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