Stakeholder advises government over collection of Practitioners fees

Tayo Oladipupo |

As the Ministry of Transportation has set December 1 to commence collection of Practitioners Operation Fee (POF) in the port, a critical stakeholder in the subsector has said that infrastructural decay in the port should be fixed to make the payment easily acceptable among the importers and clearing agents.

Adeyinka Bakare, the President General of the Nigerian Association of Freight Forwarders and Air Consolidators (NAFFAC) stated that the numerous challenges faced by port users should be taken care of before the take-off of the fee collection so that the stakeholders will find it easy to pay.

He said this in a chat with our correspondent in his office in Lagos, yesterday.

In his words, “Like I said, the problem we have now is not POF; the problem we have is the issue we have at hand in the port. If you could come out and tackle the issue of the roads, the issue of transportation, the issue of terrible charges, the issue of shipping companies charges , unnecessary demurrage, unnecessary detention.

“These are the issues that we are facing that are paramount that we need to tackle now. If these could be tackled, one or two thousand naira is nothing.

Someone that is paying N45, 000 as terminal handling charges and if you could fight it down to N30, 000. If you ask such a person to pay one thousand naira, he will be grateful paying it without stress.

“We need to fight for these things first and by the time we introduce POF, it will be easy to embrace by everybody whether at the land, air or seaport but we need to do those things that need to be done first not just going to introduce the fee. The industry has suffered a lot. I think we need to sit down and tackle it once and for all,” he added.

Speaking further, the NAFFAC PG said that the association was working with other freight forwarding groups to expunge foreigners in freight forwarding business in Nigeria.

According to him, in no distant time, the five registered associations under CRFFN would come out with its agenda to fathom a way out for the sector.

“Working with other agencies is a work in progress, we are already talking to one or two of the five associations but you know that it takes time to lobby a lot of them to come to agreement.

“I am very sure that in a very short time, we will come out with a single communique and address some issues because we are fighting a whole lot of issues,” he stated.