The Nigerian Ports Consultative Council (NPCC) on Friday called for the rehabilitation of roads along port corridors to prevent a situation where containers would fall off moving trucks.
Its Chairman, Chief Kunle Folarin while speaking in Lagos said that roads, especially along the port corridors had been stressed beyond their designed capacity.
He said that beyond rehabilitating the roads, there was the need to regulate the quality of trucks, used to freight cargoes at the ports to avoid frequent vehicular breakdowns in the course of cargo delivery.
“We need to rehabilitate the roads, which they have been doing from time to time, and is failing again because the pressure level increases. So, we need to look at how to introduce other means of transportation.
“We need to have a regulation on the type of trucks that service the ports. We need strong regulation and control.
“Weigh bridges should be installed in the ports, to know whether these trucks can actually carry this cargo.
“Some of the trucks definitely have outlived their usefulness; they cannot carry the weight which is put on them.
“But if there are weigh bridges in the ports, it will show that this truck must not be allowed to carry this cargo.
“We need surveillance along the road to seek compliance with to the safety measures that has to be installed in all the trucks.
“There must be what we call cargo hooks. These hook the container in four places after it has been loaded,” he said.
Folarin added that while short-term measures could serve as palliatives, long-term solutions would mean closing the port traffic for a while, which would be difficult.
He, however, suggested an arrangement whereby heavy-duty trucks would operate at night to cover at least 40 per cent cargo traffic between the hours of 9 pm and 6 am for easy movement.
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