About eight years after Nigerian ports were concessioned to private operators, the concessionaires have lampooned the Nigerian Ports Authority for failing to fulfill its part of the concession agreement.
Speaking at a meeting with the Nigerian Shippers’ Council in Lagos yesterday, the terminal operators took turns to X-ray the various challenges inhibiting cargo clearance at the port.
About eight years after Nigerian ports were concessioned to private operators, the concessionaires have lampooned the Nigerian Ports Authority for failing to fulfill its part of the concession agreement.
Speaking at a meeting with the Nigerian Shippers’ Council in Lagos yesterday, the terminal operators took turns to X-ray the various challenges inhibiting cargo clearance at the port.
General Manager of Ports and Terminal Multiservices Limited; Mr. Tunde Keshinro lambasted NPA saying that it has failed to provide infrastructures which was the third leg of the tripartite agreement of the ports concession
He lamented that stakeholders have refused to criticize the NPA for not living up to expectation and rather, emphasis is being placed on port charges.
"The concession of Nigerian ports were anchored on three principles, the first two has been done, but the third one, nobody is talking about it; the issue of infrastructure which was supposed to be the third part", he pointed out.
"I want to anybody to quote to me, since we started concessioning, what infrastructure has been provided for us”, he asked.
Apart from these, Keshinro pointed out that terminal operators are still having challenges with the poor pilotage services being provided by the NPA, and alleged that, vessel waiting time has not improved.
"We still have challenges in terms of pilotage services, even though the draft is better, today one of the core challenges we have is the issue of waiting time of vessels, this is part of cost but nobody is talking about it", he added.
He also said that after paying different charges within the port, importers still had challenges moving the goods to the warehouse because of the bad roads.
"One thing we assure Nigerians is to provide services and we are entitled to our service charge"
"When we talk about the service providers, what I always recommend to people is to go back and look at what made us take over some operations of NPA.
"The first issue we were contending was the harbour services, after this, in early year 2000, most of the shipping companies demanded their internal operations apart from what NPA was providing, after this came the issue of payment for services not rendered by NPA, we were part of the agitation that NPA cannot charge for services not rendered" he recalled.
Speaking earlier, Chairman of ENL Consortium, another terminal operator, Princess Vicky Hastrup said that the NPA as an interested party in the concession agreement always write to the operators to comply with existing agreements, while NPA is yet to fulfill its part.
"NPA as an interested party, writes us all the time to comply with this and that, but who will tell NPA what to bring to the table", she asked.
Hastrup said that as soon as the concession exercise was concluded, the job of BPE has ended, and that it was the job of NPA to provide Harbour services, enabling environment, and power supply.
"But nobody talks about this, it is all about what the terminal operator is supposed to do that it has not done".
"Terminal operators have a lot of challenges, terminal operation in Nigeria is not what it used to be 10 years ago, there are ships that would never berth at the ports before we took over, but we have them today, that shows that there has been a lot of confidence despite all the challenges and encumbrances encountered" she said.
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