Sequel to the poor road infrastructure leading to the ports, the National Council of Managing Directors of Licensed Customs Agents (NCMDLCA) has written a petition demanding for waivers on duty payments.
In a petition signed by its President, Mr. Lucky Amiwero, the group explained that the state of the port access roads has affected their businesses negatively.
According to them, “The condition has assumed an alarming proportion because of daily occurrence of destruction of loaded goods that always falls off the vehicles and sometime on persons”.
It stated further that the clearance of goods from Lagos ports are associated with high demurrages, Rents, Risk of carriage and continuous delay, which has hiked the overall Cost of cargo clearance.
The current situation has brought about additional cost of transportation as truck owners do not wants to risk their vehicles getting damaged.
He explained that the increase in the number of days to access and exist the port with the attendant carriage risk of continuous falling of Containers due to terrible condition of the access road within the Port area has also made importers to re-route their consignment to ports of neighbouring countries.
The petition reads in part “We hereby draw the attention of the Federal Government of Nigeria of the difficulty in assessing and exiting the Ports in Lagos due to the terrible condition of the Port access roads.
“We are indeed, concerned about the state of our Port access roads in Lagos area that accounts for almost 75% – 80% of Cargo throughput in the Country.
“The deplorable condition of the Port access roads linking Apapa, Tincan Island, PTML Lily Pond and Brawal with serious damage portion, deep potholes and flood around the roads, have also resulted in containers falling containers down as cargoes are destroyed in the process.
“The neglect is a serious setback to the Nation, as potholes, flooded Port access roads and the gridlock constitutes almost 25% of the Cumbersome, lengthy procedure and port process, which accounts for associated delays.
‘There is need for government to intervene by granting waiver on the goods that are held up in Lagos Ports, which is extremely become difficult to access and exit the port”.
He opined that the Port access road is a Trade Facilitation infrastructure that must be maintained at all times.
He further explained that the poor port access road currently constitutes a stumbling block to our International Maritime traffic as it has limited trade facilitation process as it become death traps to port operators.
However, following a special report on the deplorable state of the Apapa Wharf road by TheNewsGuru.com, the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola on Saturday signed a N4.34 Billion Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Dangote Group and other stakeholders for the reconstruction of the busy road.