News Summary:
- Customs officials at Lagos’s Murtala Muhammed International Airport are upset about a 100% increase in tariffs.
- This has caused cargo to pile up at the airport for the last four days. The officers say that the protest has cost them more than 2 billion naira.
- Ground handling companies Nacho and Sahco are adamant about the price rise. They say they followed international rules and talked to stakeholders before putting it into place.
Cargo that was supposed to leave the country in the last four days is stuck at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA) because customs agents are protesting a 100% rise in tariff.
This is also because the customs officers said that because of their protest, they have lost more than 2 billion naira.
Davies Chukwuneye, the vice chairman of the Association of Nigerian Licenced Custom Agents (ANCLA) MMIA chapter, said at a press conference over the weekend that the association had stopped working because Nigerian Aviation Handling Company (Nacho) and Skyway Aviation Handling Company (Sahco) had raised ground handling fees by 100%, even though they had done the same thing three years ago.
Chuwkuneye said that the association thought the increase was rude and insensitive. He said that the group had asked both ground handling companies to lower the price in a number of meetings, but to no avail.
“In the second week of February, the ground handlers sent a letter to the ANLCA board that said their handling and other fees would go up by 300 percent.”
“The association thought this was rude and insensitive, since the economy is so bad right now that most Nigerians are fighting to stay alive.
“Because of this, the union executives met with the ground handlers to try to get them to understand that a rise at this time is bad timing and will definitely hurt them, since it had been less than three years since their last rise,” Chuwkuneye said.
He said that when the exco tried to talk to them about this, they didn’t listen, so they grudgingly agreed to a 100% increase. He also said that there is no place in the world where a 100% increase has been accepted and put into place.
He said that people in Nigeria are fighting to make a living, and the fact that prices keep going up without better services is very worrying.
“If we do nothing and let this keep going, maybe by the end of this year there will be another increase.” We want the central government to order the people who work on the ground.
“Four days ago, we stopped providing our services to the stores. They haven’t reached out to us yet, which is disappointing because it shows that they don’t care. “We have told them that the rise won’t help anyone, not even them,” he said.
He said that the increase would put many customs agents out of business. That’s why the agents are begging the right agencies and people to step in so that the situation doesn’t get out of hand and become hard to handle.
“We’ve lost more than two billion naira in just a few days.” We’re not saying there shouldn’t be any raises; what we’re saying is that they should be fair so that we can keep our jobs.
“When this problem came up, we wrote to the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), which is in charge of rules, but we haven’t heard back from them yet. “The two ground handlers have already started putting in place the increase, which has made it hard for us to run our business,” he said.
He said that the services they have been getting from both ground managers are nothing to write home about.
“I can tell you for sure that most of the hand trucks used in both stores are bought by our members, even though we pay handling fees. We had a situation where they borrowed machines and put them in place for us to look at. A few days after we agreed to the increase, Nahco took the machines back to where they were rented.
“As I speak, the whole warehouse is leaking, and the rain has filled the place and soaked the goods.” We’ve been losing money because the rain gets our cargo wet, and we have to pay for the damaged goods ourselves because our customers won’t pay for rain-damaged goods.
But in a letter addressed to the chairman of ANLCA and signed by Boma Ukwunna and Saheed Lasisi of Sacho and Nacho, respectively, the ground handlers said that the final rate adjustment was done in line with aviation standards because all relevant stakeholders, including government agencies and the regulator, were consulted.
The ground handlers also insisted that they had followed the International Civil Aviation Organisation’s (ICAO) four main principles on increases in charges for airport and air navigation service providers. These are: cost recovery, transparency, consultation with users, and non-discrimination.
“On April 17, 2023, we had a meeting with all the important people. As a result, on April 19, 2023, we all signed an agreement saying that the 100 percent rise would go into effect on Monday, April 24, 2023.
The ground handlers said, “We were shocked and surprised that ANCLA members went ahead with a protest for a problem that had already been solved after having reached the above amount based on thorough justifications about the current economic realities.”
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