By Shola Fadeyi
In a bid to enhance safety on the waterways and achieve standard , the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) has begun stiff regulation of the operations of the barge operators in the nation’s seaports.
As a prelude ,it has temporarily frozen the licensing of barges , with a view to soon wield out operators it considered not to have measured up to standard, thus stopping them from operations, invariably.
Consequently, it is set to kick off a comprehensive review of their operations , following which it will finally remove the names of the ones which barges are below standard.
The new measures have been part of the Authority’s need to pursue the enforcement of Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for the barge operators, to sanitise their operations and achieve a regime of manageable number of quality barges , which will be in good state and equipped with the required Communications equipment.
Though the Authority has permitted only five barge operators to be operating in the interim, it is however resolved to begin a new licensing regime in the the third quarter of this year, during which it plans to license only those which will meet the rules it is to come up with for them.
The NPA Managing Director, Mr Mohammed Bello Koko who confirmed the developments in Lagos recently, said that the Authority would no longer condone the existence of substandard barges and the lawlessness and impunity with which they were operating on the Nigerian waters, hence the need for it to closely regulate and monitor their operations henceforth.
According to him, ” We have frozen the licensing of new barges for now.We will de-list those we think do not meet up with our requirements and we would come up with additional requirements for those that measure up .
“Due to the bad state of some of the barges, some of them have been known to sink , while containers have fallen off some, while on motion. We would not want to allow such to continue to happen , for safety purpose.
“We want on behalf of the Federal Government to first create standard and quality among the operators, with the hope to use that to increase their numbers. This is why , by the next quarter , we would be licensing those who meet the very stringent requirements that we are going to set for them.
‘ ‘ For instance, we would no longer allow them to operate at night , while we would insist that every barge must have the vital communication gadgets , such as the the instrument landing system .
‘’ Imagine one of the barges secretly operated at night the other time, and went to bruise a vessel , which was discharging petroleum product at berth , but it was through the grace of God that a fire outbreak did not occur’’.
