Weeks after the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) announced the commencement of the collection of the Practitioners Operating Fee (POF), some freight forwarders have complained about the performance of the e-platform that was created by the Council for the payment.
The practitioners who included members of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) Association of Registered Freight Forwarders (AREFFN) spoke with Shipping Position Daily last week on the challenges with the platform.
Rating the platform so far since it was launched a couple of weeks ago, the Publicity Secretary of ANLCA, Mr. Joe Sanni, said that the platform is not very inactive.
Sanni said that the POF cannot be effective because the people who are going to pay the fee are not being carried along.
“The POF cannot be affective because the people that they want to tax are not carried along their opinion were not sort, there was no stakeholders meeting in respect of this. So there is no way it can work.
In his own assessment, the National Public Relations Officer of NAGAFF, Mr. Stanley Ezenga even thought he admitted that the platform is not very active, he however attributed the challenges to lack of proper education of practitioners on the use of the platform.
“Yes I believe that it has not been very active, but this might be as a result of teething problems associated with new inventions and our people are not fully educated on how to use the platform, even though there have been some sensitization programmes in that regards, but then people are still learning, so I am sure with time they will catch up and then the collection will be seamless”, he said.
Also speaking a chieftain of NAGAFF, Mr. Nnadi Ugochukwu said, “My brother I am yet to be abreast of the POF issue. They have never stopped any of my containers due to inability of paying the POF”
The Apapa Chapter Chairman of AREFFN, Mr. Jones Idemili maintained that there are things that the CRFFN is supposed to have put in place to ensure effective implementation of the platform which it is yet to do.
Idemili fingered lack of knowledge of the platform as one of the challenges the platform is facing.
“To me I will say that the POF collection has not been implemented fully, there are things the CRFFN has to put in place to ensure that the implementation does not have any challenge. There are other things they are supposed to have done before implementation like most agents do not know the processes involved with registration. Some of the associations are kicking against it, but that one does not mean anything, because it has already been gazetted by the federal government”, he stated.
Meanwhile in his response, the Registrar of CRFFN, Barrister Samuel Nwakohu said he is not aware that cargoes exit the port without evidence of the payment of the POF even as he warned that defaulters will be punished as economic saboteurs.
“I am not aware that cargoes have exited the ports without them paying, but if any such thing happens at the end of the day we will know when we do reconciliation. Because POF is technologically-driven, if you come to my office you will see a screen and all the people that have been paying”
“We have statistics of all the containers that arrived at the ports, so at the end of the day, we do a calculation and if we find out that you exited the ports without paying, we will take you to the relevant authorities who will address the issue. The punishment will be prescribed as economic sabotage, then we also have a tribunal were you can send such people as provided in the CFFN Act”, he told our correspondent.
Speaking on the challenges, he said he didn’t not see any serious challenge with the platform, adding that it is easier to change a piece of furniture that human minds.
The Registrar reiterated that before the commencement of the platform, officials of the Council went round the country to sensitize practitioners telling them how the platform works.
“Well, there are really no challenges, like any other thing I don’t see anything I call serious challenge. First and foremost you can change a piece of furniture overnight, but you cannot change the way human beings think over night, you can’t. We went round the country and we did sensitization and all that, telling them how it will work and all that”
“And all of them embraced it, after the first launch I gave them three weeks break for them to get themselves ready with the new technology. Because the old portal is different with the new portal and we thought it will be wise to give them time to acquaint themselves; which a number of them did. Some had problems trying to log in and we clearly stated on the portal that if you need help call this number and as soon as those things were retrieved and we were told what the problems were, we resolved it for them”, he explained.
Nwakohu nevertheless said that the council has a 16-man technical team who are like a help line to assist whenever there is problem in the cause of using the platform.
“A whole lot of them used other people’s email address to do and when we migrated we want to bring them. And again we resolved all that, then so we have a 16-man technical team which is like a help line; whoever has a problem, if you contact those people they will help you resolve the problem”
Nwakohu accused practitioners in the industry of lack of interest in education that goes with technology.
“There are certain words I don’t like to use, but it appears to me that most freight forwarders are not interested in the education that goes with the technology. I will give you a good example, if you have a bank account and you want to use the ATM you need to know how to put your card in the machine to withdraw money, that is the trending thing. Or to book a flight on line you need to know the basic things to do, that is my take”
The CRFFN boss added that he is willing to give all the training that will help the practitioners as much as his resources can carry.
“I am willing to give all the training that they need, that will help them but the time has come when they must embrace technology and education. For them to be able to compete globally, they must embrace technology and I am willing to help and train them as much as my resources allow me” he concluded.
Discussion about this post