Stevedoring Company Laments Drop in Vessel Traffic

By ZION Olalekan |

Frontline stevedoring company; Stallion Stevedoring Limited, operators of the Ports and Terminal Multiservice Limited (PTML) has said that the traffic gridlock leading to Nigerian ports, especially the Tin Can Island Port, was affecting stevedoring operations and dockworkers because the number of vessels handled by the company has dropped.

Speaking with our correspondent, Managing Director of Stallion Stevedores, Alhaji Auwalu Ilu lamented that the level of importation has dropped and this has affected the finances of port operators.

According to a first quarter 2018 performance report released by the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) recently, the ports recorded 18,729,889 metric tonnes of goods in the first quarter of 2018 against the 17,250,334 metric tonnes of cargo the seaports received previous quarter.

Ilu told our correspondent that the finances of stevedoring companies depend largely on the number of vessels it handled and that payment is done by tonnage.

He said “The major challenge we are having is the serious traffic on the access road to the ports, because of the economy situations, this is not very good, the traffic has made our job to go down, and the level of importation has reduced”

“It is not only us as stevedores, even the ports have been affected, the number of cargoes that comes into the port dropped.

“This has equally affected our finances because our job is payment by tonnage, it is pay as you go, it is the number of ships you handle that you get paid for, so the traffic has affected everybody including the terminal operators, their income has equally gone down, until you receive cargo, you cannot charge anybody. It affects the shipping companies, terminal operators, clearing agents and every other person in the line of business” he said

NPA Managing Director, Hadiza Bala Usman speaking recently at an event in Lagos also lamented that Nigerian ports are currently experiencing dwindling fortunes, and recorded about 8.6 per cent increase in cargo throughput, while ship traffic slides 2.3 per cent and container traffic decreased by 7.1 per cent in the first quarter(Q1) of 2018

She said inward traffic stood at 10,617,318 metric tonnes, representing 56.7 per cent of cargo throughput at the ports in 2018 while the outward cargo traffic was 8,112,671 metric tonnes representing 46.3 per cent of the total cargo traffic. However, container traffic dropped in the period under review, as it stood at 387,016 Total Equivalent Unit (TEUs) indicating a decrease of 7.1 per cent from 416,806 TEUs handled by the same ports in the fourth quarter of 2017.

Ship traffic was also affected with a downward slide on the volume with 985 ships showing a decrease of 2.3 per cent from 1,008 that called in fourth quarter of 2017.

This shows a gross tonnage of ship 31,693,650 against 32,598,477 recorded in the 4th quarter of 2017, showing a decline of 2.8 per cent. The turn-around time of vessels stood at 3.8 days when compared with 4.1 day in 4th quarter of 2017. Statistics also showed that berth occupancy rate was 32.8 per cent as against 33.8 per cent in 2017.