Worried about host communities’ frustration on stevedoring and mooring services in the Niger Delta region over downstream operations, the Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria (MWUN), has stressed the need for Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) to be part of tank farm regulatory operations across the country .
The union said absence of the two leading agencies in tank farm operations has resulted to revenue losses for the federal government.
The MWUN made the allegation recently at an event tagged: Breakfast with the Senate, held in Lagos.
The Assistant Organising Secretary of the union, Abdullahi Eroje told the gathering of stakeholders how the Nigerian Navy, NIMASA and NPA, through negligence made the government to lose money.
Eroje alleged that top government agencies in the maritime sector have no representatives in all the over 250 tank farms across the country.
As a result, he noted that revenue the government would have been generating from the ancillary services was being lost to private individuals.
He lamented that with the existence of the tank farms in Nigeria, there is no presence of NPA or NIMASA ; leaving the mooring and stevedoring jobs to the community dwellers.
He added that the present shortage of junior staff in NPA was responsible for the anomaly as there were shortfall of personnel to carry out the functions of the Authority across the ports in Nigeria.
His words: “Revenue loss: like I listed to my brother, we have over 250 jetties in this country and in these tank farms, no presence of NPA officials, let anybody prove me wrong here.
“Under – declaration of tonnage, what you see there is the community presence especially in the Niger Delta area. They do the mooring, they are the stevedore and if the stevedore is posted to any of these tank farms, the Navy is there, I am happy that the representative of the Chief of Naval Staff is here, they block the gate and will not allow the stevedore to go in.
NPA officials are not there.
“Between Oghara, Koko, we have more than 20 to 30 tank farms, no stevedore, you hardly find NIMASA there.
So, the government is losing a lot of money.
“NPA as it is now, the junior staff is not more than 3,000 and before concession, they were having up to 13,000 workforce and we have areas where they suppose to man, nobody is talking about that”.
On how to get rid of gridlock from the roads, he suggested that the rail lines leading to the port be revitalised.
He also pleaded with the federal government to open the railway to private investors by removing it from the exclusive list and bringing it to the concurrent list.
“The port was working before the port concession, we knew how the port looked like. The problem is evacuation of goods and services from the port.
“Last year I suggested to the Minister of Transportation that the railway lines leading to the ports should be revitalised and resuscitated.
“I heard somebody saying we should divert ships to Port Harcourt, if you divert ships to Port Harcourt, to bring the goods back to the customer in Lagos, it will cost you more than N2 million.
“We have rail lines constructed into the port by the colonial masters but today, the rail line is moribund.
“This problem can only be solved if rail lines constructed into the port are resuscitated. My opinion is that this committee should work hand in hand and let all our ports be connected with rail line, that will solve the problem of gridlock.
“Railway should be removed from exclusive list, let it go to concurrent list so that investors can come in,” he stated.