A former Chairman of the Council for the
Registration of Freight Forwarders, Mr. Tony Iju Nwabunike, has said that the
group has concluded plans to join the Nigerian Shippers' Council, NSC, in
moving against terminal operators over arbitrary charges.
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| Mr. Tony Iju Nwabunike |
Speaking in Lagos, Nwabunike who is
contesting for the office of President of the National Association of Nigeria
Licensed Customs Agents, ANLCA, said that the group had expressed displeasure
at the rate terminal operators have been increasing port charges without
recourse to the authorities.
He said this in his manifesto while
promising to facilitate cordial engagement with Customs and relevant committees
to attain equal benefit for clearing agents; standardize cargo clearing process
and charges, encourage and facilitate members to team up to acquire Customs
licenses.
He said: “The relationship between the customs
and the customs brokers have been very cordial, there is bottleneck of
multiplicity of agencies and some custom units, the government has said it
would look at them and merge them together and make sure they have one or two
area of customs where only generation of revenue would be monitored and not to
have many tables as it use to be.
“Every leader comes with its own ideas and
vision.
The ideas of our out going President is
administrative idea, he has put in a good secretariat and put us on the limelight
of the international organisation. He has done well in administration but I
think something is lacking in operational.
“We have to do so many things in operation.
If you look at the concessionaires, arbitrary charges is too much, the charges
going on through the shipping company, the roads to Apapa is bad, welfare of
the association has not been meet.
“Everybody is holding us to ransom,
everything is collapsing, most importantly, our jobs have been taken away by
foreigners and customs. The customs, government agencies have taken away our
jobs, a quarantine is now a freight forwarder. A customs, NAFDAC officer is a
freight forwarder, even transporters are practicing customs brokerage.
“Our predecessors have done very well in
administration but on operations we need to work harder, we know where the
problems are and we want to fix it,” he said.
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