The National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) has identified non-availability of funds as the main reason many freight forwarders operating in the ports are yet to acquire the required skills in the business of freight forwarding.
National President of NAGAFF, Mr Eugene Nweke made this observation during a chat with Shipping Position Daily in his office in Lagos last week.
The National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) has identified non-availability of funds as the main reason many freight forwarders operating in the ports are yet to acquire the required skills in the business of freight forwarding.
National President of NAGAFF, Mr Eugene Nweke made this observation during a chat with Shipping Position Daily in his office in Lagos last week.
He said that even though the vision of the association is to look into the dearth of competent manpower in the sector and to ensure training and re-training of freight forwarders, funds have been the major challenge of the association in fulfilling this objective.
“We have been doing that in our own capacity, but funds have been a problem, every forwarder will want you to subsidize his fees, even when you need to force them to go back to school, they don’t appreciate it, they still believe in that master-servant arrangement, but freight forwarding has gone beyond that”, he lamented, adding that, “today there is an Act by the National Assembly which listed requirements for you to become a freight forwarder”.
Mr Nweke also observed that many freight forwarding practitioners have acquired skills practically but that they are still not enhanced on the job simply because they have not gone for training and re-training in order to enhance their performance.
Speaking further, he said that so many people have been trained under the arrangement of tutelage, but that the other aspect that will allow them in the committee of freight forwarders globally is still lacking and this is why NAGAFF is based on ushering in sustainable freight forwarding practice through training.
“So it behooves on us as an association to give direction to this effect, which is why we often encourage those who have the resources to attend some of these programmes”.
According to Mr Nweke , the lack of funds for training was one of the main reasons why freight forwarders came together under the then-Joint Action Committee of Freight Forwarders (JACOFF) to collect Cargo Clearance Dues (CCD) which later metamorphosed into Transaction Fees which eventually divided the freight forwarding council; that is the, CRFFN.
“It is for us to collect money and start training our people because left to the government they prefer us not to be exposed to anything”, he pointed out.
“The role of freight forwarders cannot be wished away in the supply chain, so we will continue to plead with those who have the resources to go while we also collaborate with some agencies that will come to our aid and see the need for training”.
He said that NAGAFF as an association is already in discussion with the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) to train some of its members on safety courses.
“Today we are not just talking about project cargo, we are talking about dangerous cargo and the environment itself, a lot of security issues are coming up and freight forwarders need to be aware so that they don’t just sheepishly go into doing certain things in the port under the guise of clearing a cargo”, he stressed.
Discussion about this post