Notably, the two ports located in Apapa-Lagos Port Complex (LPC) and Tin-Can Island Port Complex (TCIPC) – are the two top revenue earners for the NCS.
The agents alleged that the state at which the server breaks down could best be described as an act of sabotage by the service provider.
The Chairman, National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF), Port and Terminal Multi-services Limited (PTML) Terminal Chapter, Mr. Cosmos Ndimkora, said that the system failure has become a regular occurrence, noting that it is usually experienced towards the end of every month.
Ndimkora said that, except the service provider upgrade its system, the problem will still persist.
He said: “With the experience we have had, the server failure usually happens at the end of each month. In ICT, there is what we call account, so, when they are trying to move over to another account at the end of every month, that is when the problem becomes constant. It will break down for two to three days without coming up at all.”
Also speaking, another Customs agent, Mr. Bright Nwosu, claimed that at the TCIPC, the server has been failing since Monday, adding that agents are always at the receiving end of the inefficiency of the service provider.
Nwosu said that agents could not process their documents for several hours on Monday due to the network failure.
“If you want to go and rate your charges, they will tell you there is no network, and that the problem is from Web Fontaine.Yet if you cannot rate your charges on a particular day, the shipping companies will continue to charge you for demurrage,” he lamented.
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.