By Ewrhujakpor Godfrey Bivbere
Harboursandport.com: Lagos - October 22, 2024: The delay in signing release documents by officials of the Nigeria Customs Service, NCS at the Lekki port has led to trapping of over 50 containers for which all relevant clearance processes have been completed Harboursandport.com can authoritatively report.
Harboursandport.com gathered that the above has led to the payment of demurrage running into several millions of naira.
With the staggered storage rate at the port, resulting in higher storage payment for containers that stays longer at the port, importers and their agents are expected to pay even much more for a delay not caused by them.
A source at the port told Harboursandport.com that two officials of the Service who are responsible for signing cargo release papers, had gone for training at Abuja for the second week running while such release documents gathered dust on their tables.
Harboursandport.com gathered that an importer with ten containers is meant to cough out N10,000 per day after the grace period, an amount that further increases to N25,000 when it gets to the next stage.
The importer who had paid to total of N500,000.00 for five days (Monday to Friday last week) hoping to take delivery of the consignments by Saturday, was forced to pay N25,000 for Saturday and Sunday hoping to take delivery by Monday October 21 because the said officers were still not at the office.
During the first stage, the importer is expected to pay N10,000 per container multiplied by 10 containers which is N100,000 a day; an amount when multiplied by five days (Monday to Friday), broght the amount paid for storage to N500,000.
With the document still not signed, the importer was forced to pay the next scale of N25,000 per container a day for two days (Saturday and Sunday) which is N500,000 but the said officers are still yet to return from Abuja.
As at Monday, the importer's agent, Harboursandport.com gathered are at a loss as to how many days demurrage to pay since they do not know when the officers would return.
When contacted, the Public Relations Officer of Lekki port Command who introduced himself as Abdullahi Lagos, confirmed the above.
According to him, "I said I have an idea of what you just mentioned, last week I was not around but I got a call from someone who mentioned it to me.
"It is the Technical Supervisor, TS, who went for a training at the headquarters.
"He returned to the office on Monday and l am sure he has treated those documents. It's not his job but to approve it and send to the releasing officer.
"They couldn't do it last week because the network was bad, I'm very sure they must have done it now."
"So why don't they just go and meet him, he is in his office now.
"So I'm even surprised the job has not been attended to and I wondered why they are escalating it," he queried.
Nice one
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