The Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria (MWUN) has once again raise alarm over what it called insecurity at private jetties and concessioned areas of Nigerian ports, saying that these areas are highly volatile.
In an exclusive interview with Shipping Position Daily in Lagos last week, President of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) branch of the union, Comrade Ifeayin Mazeli said that the NPA does not have enough staff working at these jetties to checkmate illegal operations and this calls for concern.
To this end, Mazeli appealed to the Minister of Transportation; Mr Rotimi Amaechi to direct the Managing Director of NPA, Hadiza Bala Usman to carry out recruitment exercise at the authority, especially of junior workers.
The union leader lamented that the staff strength of NPA has depleted over the years and there is need to recruit more hands to learn on the job.
"I want to emphasise on the area of staff strength, the truth is that there is a lot of things going on that is not supposed to happen, if you talk of the concessioned areas, we do not have our people there because we don't have enough manpower which is the junior staff"
"We have more officers now than staff, and these officers cannot work like the junior staff, we have a lot of jetties but nobody goes there to check what is going on, this is where the insecurity comes in, and this is the area I want the management to focus on"
"I am also using this opportunity to call on the Minister of Transportation to look at this situation and give a matching order to the management of Nigerian Ports Authority through the Managing Director to employ enough junior staff, a situation whereby you have more officers than staff, how do you think such organisation can work?
"These officers are used to air conditioning, but we are the people staying inside the sun to do the job, I am not killing the aspect of growth, but where the officers are more than staff, then it has become an irony" He said
Comrade Mazeli also alleged that most of the terminal operators are not making accurate returns to the Federal Government through the NPA on their overall cargo throughput because there is no proper checks and balance
"Let me also inform you that since we are not properly manning these concessioned areas, we are not very sure that what is being remitted to NPA is what should be remitted"
"If you allow a concessionaire to bring an inflow to you and you are one of them, you would monitor the situation better.
"As it is now, we cannot say for real what is passing through the jetties, the concessionaires can bring in anything, we are not even sure that they are paying the right money to the Federal government through NPA. Officers cannot do the work of tally and clerks" He said
Mazeli called on the MD of NPA , the Executive Director Finance and Administration and General Manager Human Resources to look at issue of junior staff employment so that the jetties and terminals would be properly manned.
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