By Uzor Odigbo
All Ports Unified Freight-Forwarding Association (APUFFA) which comprises maritime practitioners have called on the federal government to adopt unstacking method of containers in the terminals .
The newly formed association which made this known on Wednesday, stated that the system would help to put an end to the nightmarish gridlocks on ports access roads.
The National President of the group, Prince Mike Okorie while speaking in Lagos shortly after a brief meeting with the Customs Area Controller, Tin Can Island Command, Comptroller MBA Musa, said the innovation would address issues of port congestion and eradication of container deposit paid to shipping lines.
Okorie who led a high-powered delegation of the executives of the association, suggested that the process would do away with container deposit debacle among freight agents, shipping lines and terminal operators.
According to him, the system if adopted, content of consignments would be discharged at the terminal and taken away on trucks while the container would be available for return by the vessels.
He added that the issue of being held on the road for days would no longer emanate even as trucks would have no reasons to be on the roads with empty containers decked on it.
Okorie affirmed: “We appealed to the federal government to help ease the issue of gridlock because we have written to a lot of agencies for us to come together and tackle the issue of gridlock.
“If government can make it as a policy that if you have normal goods that is not fragile or perishable, they can be unstuffed in the terminal so that you can go with your goods without need of returning empty containers.”
Continuing, he said: “As a new association, we want to make ourselves known to the stakeholders which includes the regulators and every other person that is concerned.
“We have been visiting a lot of organisations like PIL, the police AIG, Maerskline and some others which we are still going to visit.
“The need to visit Tin Can Customs cannot be over emphasised as you can see a lot of problems our people are passing through in the industry.
“We went there to see how we can discuss some of these problems and also to see how we can help the government to reduce the menace of gridlock.
“We went there with a lot of issues in mind but because of want of time, we had to dwell on one or two.”
Okorie maintained, however, that “it is the return of empty containers back to the ports that is causing the gridlock.
