- Shippers’ Council wasn’t notified of Five Star technical closure – Jime
Twenty days after the sudden deactivation of Five Star Logistics Terminal on the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) portal, the Service has reactivated the terminal after it paid the N97.3million being queried by Customs.
Although the terminal paid the N97.3million to Customs on Wednesday last week, News Diet learnt that bureaucracies at Customs headquarters in Abuja stalled the reopening of the terminal’s access to Customs portal until this morning.
While experts posit that the abruptly shutting the terminal’s access would cost Nigerian shippers over N2billion as demmurage and other fiscal losses, the terminal operator is set to issue waivers for the storage of consignments received during the period.
The port facility is already congested with several ships berthing to deliver cargoes received since July 7th when Customs deactivated the terminal thereby making it impossible to evacuate the cargoes.
Meanwhile, speaking with our correspondent recently, the Executive Secretary of Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC), Hon. Emmanuel Jime lamented that neither the terminal operator nor affected port users brought an official complaint to the Council on the issue.
While acknowledging that the situation would lead to economic losses for port users, the NSC boss assured that Shippers’ Council would look into the situation.
His words: “I’m just getting this information from you about the crisis at Five Star Logistics at Tin Can Island Port. The reason we were able to timely intervene in the workers strike at APMT Apapa is that there was due notification about the exercise. Unless information about such challenges as you highlighted in Five Star Logistics Terminal is brought to the notice of NSC, we wouldn’t be able to address it. I’m glad that you have brought this up and we would look into the situation with Customs.”
Meanwhile, there are also reports that several companies have been affected by the fast track cargoes which are usually production materials for manufacturers.
