President, Association of Maritime Truck Owners (AMATO), Chief Remi Ogungbemi, on Friday said that truckers may withdraw their services from Lagos ports because of the bad access roads.
Ogungbemi said in Lagos that the port access roads were in terrible state and was hampering business.
The AMATO president said that the truckers’ planned boycott would have started before now if not for the intervention of some respected operators.
“The association intends to have a meeting with some operators on Oct. 25; if this meeting fails to proffer feasible palliatives, truckers will not have any other option.
“For a long time now, we have been drumming it in the ears of the authorities without any attention on their part. “We cannot continue to work in a vicious circle in which trucks break down after every trip to the ports due to bad roads.
“We end up expending a huge amount to put them back on the road,” Ogungbemi said. The condition of the road was so bad, causing trucks to stay longer than expected on loading queues or to drop empties, he said.
The AMATO president added that truck drivers wasted business hours just trying to get to the ports. “It seems the only way left for us to make the authorities listen to us and fix the roads is to down tools.
Some youths have taken advantage of the situation by undertaking temporary repairs to the road and putting in place makeshift platforms for vehicles to pass for a fee.
Copyright Ships & Ports Ltd. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit given to www.shipsandports.com.ng as the source.
