The Maritime Workers
Union of Nigeria (MWUN) has warned that Port operations nationwide will be shut down if the Federal Government failed to withdraw its directive to Terminal Operators to revert to their 2009 tariff from next week Monday.
The union in a petition signed by its Secretary General, Mr Aham Ubani, dated November 10, 2014 and sent to the Minister of Transport, Senator Idris Umar, stated that, “our attention has been drawn to the recent directive from the Nigeria Shippers Council (NSC) to seaport terminal operators instructing them to revert to their 2009 tariff as a panacea to achieving an acceptable lower overall lost of doing business in our Sea Ports”.
The Tide correspondent gathered that the petition, titled, “Demand for withdrawal of Shippers Council’s Directive on Reversion of Sea Port Terminal Tariff to 2009 Rate”, also has it that the union acknowledged the need to make their seaports less expensive in order to  make the ports the preferable ones within the sub-region, adding, “we however, wish to observe that the prevailing high cost of doing business in our ports needs to be addressed holistically if the desired goal is to be achieved in its entirety”.
The Union scribe noted that some cost factors that have been challenging the Ports had to be drastically looked into, which include poor access roads to the port as it gave rise to high cost of hiring trucks to convey goods in and outside the ports, presence and practice of illegal tolls and extortion of illegal sums of money by various agencies operating in the ports both legally and illegally as well as activities of some officers and men of the Nigeria Customs Services (NCS), which also gave rise to the high cost of operation at the ports.
He said that, “we are alarmed that an institution with or without legal authority to perform the duties of Port regulator could evolve such biased directive targeting terminal operators cost alone with dire consequences on our members – the Dockworkers and operational efficiency without informed consultation with relevant stakeholders on all the above elements and their cost burden implications on the sea ports”.
Ubani further decried the non-consideration of the presence customers price index and that of the rate of inflation would have some consequences on the directive and stated that the refusal  of the terminal operators and stevedoring contractors to negotiate the dockworkers condition of service is over-due this year.
According to him, “our members have become restive and may resort to self-help nationwide with effect from Monday 17th November, if the terminal operators still refused to negotiate on the grounds of being incapacitated by the directive”.