A total of 355 vessels with gross registered tonnage of 5, 147,029 ship traffic were handled by Rivers Port within the period of January-September 2012.

This was disclosed by the Port Manager, Rivers Port complex, Mr. Lawrence Alabi during a chat with newsmen in his office at the Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA), Basket House complex, Port Harcourt recently.

Mr. Alabi said the Port during the period under review recorded 4, 103, 298 metric tones of cargo throughout.

He hinted that this was made up of 3, 792, 772 inward and 310,526 outward cargos of bulk operations, refined petroleum products, bagged rice and fish among others.

According to him, there is a tremendous improvement in cargo throughout at the Port during the period and noted that the Port under his administration had been proactive in addressing critical concerns of the Port.

The Port Manager said the management was committed to addressing the various challenges militating against high performance of Port operations.

Mr. Alabi said the improved performance of the Port was based on the arrangement on ground since the take off of the Terminal operators, adding that although there are areas of improvement, but their presence has brought a remarkable improvement on the Ports operations.

He further noted that since the new rules for the discharge of operations in the Port., the benchmark had been raised upward both in ships and vessels traffic, stressing “the average turn around time has witnessed an improvement too.”

According to him, despite the improvement, there are significant areas that the terminal operators need to improve upon in order to compete favourable with their counterparts in the maritime industry and for maximum input.

Such areas, he said include staff capacity development. He also charged the stevedoring firms contracted to carry out certain Port operations to live up to expectation.