The Managing Director of the Truck Transit Park, Jama Onwubuariri has said the time trucks spend to access or exit the ports has been reduced from about two weeks to 90 hours.
He disclosed this during a media briefing in Lagos.
In 2021, the Nigerian Ports Authority tasked the TTP to manage the Electronic Call-Up system for trucks in its bid to curb the menace of traffic gridlock along the ports access road.
He said, “Our target is 24hours, we recently implemented a terminal request procedure that ensures that on a daily basis, terminals will provide us electronically and in the act.
“So, from their own profile they will be able to provide us, the number of containers but exports and empties that they are expecting from the respective shipping lines that they served. Now the NPA is also expected to get from the terminal operators the number of trucks they can process in a day across all the categories.”
Since truckers began using the facility of TTP, the Council of Maritime Unions and Associations have accused it of charging up to N21, 000 per truck as against the normal price of N10, 000.
According to Onwubuariri, truckers are only asked to pay up to N20, 000 per truck if they do not have their own parks.
He said, “The service fee for the trucks parked here is N10,000 and as you are aware, the Federal Government charges Value Added Tax of 7.5 per cent so that makes it N10,750.
“As a truck owner you should have a park where you keep your trucks before they are ready to go to the ports because of the new procedures put in place by the NPA and TTP. No truck can enter the port directly again. It needs to come to a facility like this where it will wait before it is scheduled to go in.”
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