Lagos- The Shippers’ Association Lagos State (SALS) on Wednesday urged the Federal Government to engage technocrats to administer some aspects of operations of the nation’s maritime agencies to increase efficiency.
The President of the association, Mr Jonathan Nicol, made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.
“We need technocrats to handle areas like the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA); NIMASA (Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency) is doing very well.
“The Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) should give us Nigerian standard so that importers will know the standard we actually need in this country when we are importing goods.
“At the moment, we don’t have the Nigerian standard.
“I think we use the U.K. standard. So we should draw up a standard that will agree with our traditional concepts.
“We suggest that government in making their budgets should have 10 dollars from oil as savings always; and that 10 dollars should always be in our reserve banks.
“ It is not subject to sharing from any state government.“
He urged the Federal Government to bring about sanity in the port.
The shipper said the ports’ access roads should be properly constructed and should also be available to only the port users with a view to increasing government’s revenue.
“The roads leading to the port has to be properly constructed and managed and if possible, only port users should be allowed to use those roads.
“That means we have to create a bridge across the Ajegunle Canal to the Apapa Marine road.
“Also create another bridge from the Boundary Market to Apapa.
“So, instead of people going through Marine beach as the only route to the port, they can come through Kirikiri road.
“ Climb the bridge because we don’t have vessels entering Apapa-Ajegunle Canal.
“So, we can build a bigger bridge that would accommodate trucks through the Marine road to Apapa as well.
“We are talking about the new order that will bring so much relief not only to the shippers but also to government.
“Compared with the huge problems we are encountering at the moment to manage success. “
According to him, expansion of the port access roads will also reduce the period of doing business at the ports. (NAN)
