5,000 Tokunbo vehicles abandoned at Lagos terminals – Agents

The youth leader of the Nigerian Graduate Customs Agents Association, Saliu Sikiru, urged the House of Representatives to review the 28 days for overtime cargoes and vehicles in a letter from Sunday PUNCH.

Sikiru, who is also the ANLCA coordinator for the Five Star Logistics Terminal, urged the National Assembly to extend the time from 28 days to 90 days.

He said the 28 days on imported vehicles and loads caused a lot of problems for importers.

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The letter said: “In view of the above, we are urging the above-mentioned authority to review the 28 days on vehicles and cargoes as this is wreaking havoc on the importers. Many vehicles, both container vehicles and roll-on-roll-off, and cargoes are stuck in various terminals in the port due to the government’s harsh policy. We are appealing to the federal government to extend the days; 90 days is never a bad idea, because the 28 days has caused a lot of problems due to increases in customs duties and overtime cargo documents sometimes take two months to process and cost more.

“However, we have more than 3,000 overtime vehicles and cargoes in the Five Star Logistics Terminal and more than 2,000 in the PTML terminal, which are caused by this harsh policy and operating system that causes a lot of congestion, but they have not moved them to the designated terminal for overtime loads for more than three years now.”

Sikiru called for urgent action so that the problems would not affect growth and revenue generation for the government.

“Another big concern is that those cargoes that have paid customs duties, have been released and have left customs, but are still in the terminal for some reason, will also go through the overtime process and we know how much that costs. We call on the various authorities, including the Customs and Excise Committees of the House of Representatives and the Senate, to urgently investigate this as it does not help generate revenue for the government,” he added.

Another freight forwarder, Mr. Alabi Bukola, spoke about why some shipments were still at the terminals even after being allowed to leave them: bureaucracy. There was also a time when we had banking problems; we paid and the payment would not go down; we had to go through some procedures before getting to customs.

“So because of all these issues, many shipments would have stayed longer than the established clearance days of 28 days. With this medium we want to call on the government to change the 28-day policy to a minimum of 90 days.”

Mr. Tunde Keshinro, PTML’s general manager, responded by admitting that there was overtime, but added that 60 percent of the terminal’s vehicle capacity was still unused.

However, he admitted that trade at the terminal declined last year due to government policies.

An attempt to get a response from Five Star Logistics Terminal was unsuccessful as the terminal’s head of customer service Mr Chuks Okereafor said he was unable to speak on the matter.