The National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) has explained why it will be impossible for freight forwarders operating to be at the ports on weekends.
The Ports and Terminal Multipurpose Limited (PTML) chapter chairman of NAGAFF, George Okafor gave this explanation in a chat with Shipping Position Daily at PTML recently.
Okafor was reacting to the recent statement by the General Manager, PTML, Mr Tunde Keshinro, that freight forwarders cause delay in operation at the terminal by not coming to work on weekends.
It will be recalled that over the weekend when a delegation from the Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Keshinro lamented that unavailability of freight forwarders to work during weekends is affecting them negativity.
"Today is Saturday, if you go to the examination bay nothing is happening there. So if I am discharging today I have no opportunity to do further activities on that cargo, I am going to leave it looked up till around Monday or Tuesday and there is already an in balance and this is a full operations going on we want the agencies to work 24 hours in real physical sense not on papers”
“The clearing agents keep complaining, but you don’t see them coming to work on Saturday, you don’t see them coming to work early in the morning, often times we are idle four to five hours. We open our gates by 8am but we don’t see effective agents coming to demand service from you until 12 noon; the real activities start by 1pm. It is not enough to complain that Nigerian port is not effective, but how are you processing your own work to take advantage of the opportunities provided”, he told the delegation.
But reacting to this, Mr Okafor said that freight forwarders are ready to come to work even on Sunday only if the government agencies are ready to corporate with them.
"On the issue of coming to work on Saturdays, I can tell you that freight forwarders are ready to come to work even on Sundays if the people involved are ready to work with us"
"Because if as a freight forwarder I come here on Saturday to do examination. maybe the Customs officer who is supposed to be here for the examination is not here, because the examination is not done by one unit of the service", he noted.
He said that the agencies must agree to always be on ground on weekends, adding that freight forwarders don’t want a situation where after examining the cargo on Saturday, they will be asked to reposition for the same examination on Monday.
"We have the releasing, examination officers and even the CIU. So if any of the agencies were not here during the examination it will hamper the examination"
"You find out that in Monday, they will come to tell you that you will repeat the examination because they didn't witness the examination that is the problem"
"If there will be a meeting where all the agencies will assure the freight forwarders that if you come during the week end the examination will be properly carried out and nobody will call for a repeat of the examination we don't have problem with that", he stressed.
According to him, no freight forwarder will like to reposition his container for examination because of cost and damages.
"Because no freight forwarder will want to reposition his container for examination that is why people prefer to do it between Monday to Friday when they are sure that the examination will hold"
"If they want us to be coming on weekends there will be a meeting of all the agencies to ensure that all of them will be there for the examination", he added.
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