The Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, Adegboyega Isiaka Oyetola has promised to eliminate extortions of maritime truck drivers, illegal checkpoints, and unapproved parking of trucks along the road among other vices causing traffic along the port access roads, within one week.
Rising from a stakeholders’ meeting held at the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) headquarters in Lagos with the theme: Review of Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for Truck Traffic Management Along the Lagos Port Corridor, Oyetola assured the stakeholders who included leaders of various truck associations, NPA officials, the E-Call up system management team and Lagos State government, that the issues would be dispensed with within one week.
The Minister who was represented at the meeting by his technical aide, Professor Busayo Stephen Fakinlede, told the stakeholders who were mostly from the trucking subsector that a committee had been set up to review all the grouses and suggest solutions, saying the issues would be resolved within one week.
Speaking at the forum, Oyetola noted, “We can see that all the stakeholders are here to make sure we resolve all these issues and you can see the passionate intention of everyone to see that this problem is solved.
So, we are going home with the singular thing that all the bottlenecks will be things of the past”.
“We have already set up a committee and all the solutions proffered to the problems will be put together for the committee to review and in a week, some of these issues will be resolved.
When asked how he intends to sustain the resolutions arrived at the meeting, Oyetola stated that the meeting he was having with stakeholders is a departure from what obtained in the past saying that the people whose businesses are mostly affected are involved in the meeting.
He explained that maritime is germane to the development of the economy adding that as stakeholders would not want to lose money, so would the government.
“The difference between this and the past ones is that the stakeholders here are part of the problems, we have the truck owners, terminal owners, and the other stakeholders here, it is affecting their businesses and they know the solutions. That is why everybody is here today.
“Talking about maritime, time is money. The stakeholders cannot afford to lose money so also the government does not want to lose money.
“The only way is for them to work together to find solutions and that is what will happen in the next couple of weeks because anytime we delay, it affects them. That is why this particular meeting is going to be different from the previous ones.
“The issues that have to do with infrastructure, those will take a little time but the solutions start from now and we already taking them one by one,” he exuded confidence.
Earlier, the Special Adviser to the Lagos Governor on Transport, Hon. Sola Giwa reiterated that the state had earlier resolved to move parked trucks out of the roads.
He called on the management of NPA to review its Minimum Safety Standards (MSS) on trucks saying the scheme is not achieving its purpose because according to him, there are many rickety trucks still playing the port roads.
He added that it is important that the minister sit down with the IG of Police to rid the roads of miscreants and police officers extorting truckers along the corridor.
“There are too many roadblocks. NPA security and LASMA are collecting money,” he fumed.
He commended the efforts of the Electronic Call Up System (E-Call up System) managers over the years saying they have helped a great deal but advised that they should not turn themselves into revenue generators and forget about their core mandate of traffic management
“E-Call up System is working, don’t scrap it. Your solution is superb but you must not turn yourself into a revenue-generating agency.”
One of the leading trucking groups, the Association of Maritime Truck Owners (AMATO) in its position paper, posited that the E-Call up System would have been a success but for interference by government and non-governmental actors, manipulation of the system by owners of NPA-approved parks, terminals low productivity, uncontrolled release of Export Processing Terminals (EPTs), among other factors leading to increase in traffic along the corridor.
AMATO therefore called on the ministry to help address the menace of hoodlums popularly called area boys mounting illegal roadblocks.
The group added that EPTs should operate in line with the SOP in releasing trucks, and deployment of E-tag technology to eliminate theft of E-Call up system identity or bypassing of the system’s procedure.
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