Former CILT Director Condemns NPA Truck Standardization At Ports

‎Former National Executive Director of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT) Mr. Francis Ehiguese has said that it is an institutional failure for Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) to establish a safety unit for the standardization of trucks plying the port.
Ehiguese who is currently the‎ Centre Director, Centre For Logistics and Transport Education told Shipping Position Daily in an exclusive chat that NPA regulating trucks inside the port is a slap on agencies like Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) Vehicle Inspection Officers (VIO) and other State Vehicle Inspection Directorates.
Our correspondent recalls that the NPA had instructed truck drivers and their unions to register their trucks with N10,000 and in return get a sticker that will last them throughout 2016.
Ehiguese however said that if care is not taken, other ministries will begin to come up with standardization platforms and begin to collect money from truckers.
“It is an institutional failure that NPA today now has a safety unit that will have to standardize the vehicles that come into the port and they are going to pay a fee of N10,000”
“For me it is a slap on these institutions set up by State and Federal Government, particularly the Vehicle Inspection Officers, Vehicle Inspectorate Directorate of Lagos State, Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC)”
“These are bodies established statutorily to standardize vehicles on our ways, it is because they have failed to carry out their‎ statutory functions that the NPA is coming in as a standardization authority on land authority”
The frontline logistics expert noted that NPA is supposed to get information from the FRSC, adding that they are suppose to work in tandem with‎ the VIO and the FRSC to come up with the standard of vehicles required to operate at the ports.
He said that it is not for NPA to set up an independent standardization unit.
“What gave rise to this is the institutional failure on the part of the other institutions, particularly in Lagos state and Rivers State where there is challenges of rickety trucks and long queues”
“If these institutions are not careful about the move by NPA, a time is coming that other ministers will begin to come up with their own standardization platforms, I think we should restrict ourselves to where we are expected to statutorily operate‎” Ehiguese.