Vincent Toritseju
Lagos — THE Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA has said that its intervention in the face-off between the International Oil Companies, IOCs, and the National Association of Stevedoring Operators, NASO, has compelled the oil companies to begin compliance with the policy mandating them to admit stevedoring services into their operations.
While speaking, the Managing Director of the NPA, Mr. Mohammed Bello-Koko said that the appointed Stevedores represent the interest of the NPA in all locations of the operations of the IOCs.
The IOCs were initially reluctant to engage local Stevedores saying that they do not have what is required to operate on IOCs’ platforms.
Bello-Koko explained that the agency’s intervention has not only stabilize the relationship between the IOCs and NASO but that some of the oil companies have entered into agreement with some Stevedores while some of the suppliers of labour have also moved to locations of some IOCs.
He said: “We all know that NPA is the Master Stevedore, and we have the responsibility to either carry out the stevedoring functions or get a third party on behalf of the Nigerian Ports Authority to do them.
“Some years back, we appointed stevedoring companies, but it has been quite difficult to get the IOCs to accept them to go into their locations.
“The IOCs are giving many excuses for not wanting to have the appointed stevedores on their facilities. Some of the excuses are that the local stevedores do not have equipment, they do not have staff and so on. Some of the excuses they gave are not true in the sense that some of the stevedores have been doing related jobs for decades.
“What we did was to sit down with the IOCs and agreed on timelines telling them that they must allow the stevedores take over this responsibility. We have written to the Federal Ministry of Transport on this also and a meeting was held between the stevedoring association and oil producing companies and the Federal Ministry of Transport. Some of the OICs have started allowing the local stevedores to move to their locations.
“We do not have full compliance yet and we just wrote an update to the Federal Ministry of Transport.
“The other option we had is to stop providing marine services to the IOCs but that will not be the right decision because it will affect the economy.
‘‘We are working with them and I believe they are now beginning to realize that the right thing to do is allow the law of the land take pre-eminence and we have started seeing an element of compliance by the IOCs.
‘‘We will continue to engage them and I believe that the Federal Government, knowing that revenue is being lost because the IOCs are not allowing the stevedores move to sight, will take it seriously.
“I am absolutely sure that in no distance time, there will be full compliance by the IOCs.”
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