By Helen Ugo Chimezie
Port officials based at ports and terminals in the Port Harcourt Zone of the Nigerian Maritime Sector have been trained on compliance function and leadership within the maritime sector.
The two-days training which took place at Novotel Port Harcourt was geared towards strengthening the capacity of port officials to effectively carry out their roles, which involves promoting and maintaining compliance and ethical practices in all areas of their work.
Speaking on the training, the Director of Programmes at the Convention Business Integrity (CBi), Emmanuel Bosah, said the aim of the training is to help these port agencies to strengthen their compliance function; “And part of that is to help them improve their capacity to understand, which is to define, to detect, to respond to, and to evaluate compliance failures and successes within their institutions. And that will domesticate a system of consequence for those that fail to follow the process.”
Bosah further said that the programme intended to train port officials to follow the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) of their organizations. “And in a situation where they are not in compliance with those rules, they can be held accountable by their own organizations, rather than waiting for the likes of the Port Standing Task Team (PSTT), which cannot be everywhere.”
He also noted that it is expected that after the training, the port officials would understand exactly what the standards should be for compliance and also train their rank and file, so they understood how to behave.
Also speaking at the training, the President of Compliance Function, Rivers and Bayelsa Shippers Association, Ofon Udofia, disclosed that the Eastern Ports are not improving, due to some infractions. He hence stated that the essence of the training in the region is to replicate in Port Harcourt and Calabar, what has been done in Lagos.
Udofia added that there are issues that must be trashed out such as where some agencies and officers allegedly extort money by creating bottlenecks that delay peoples’ cargo unjustly and end up making the vessels pay demurrage. This, he said, makes business owners skeptical about Nigerian ports.
He noted that the training in Port Harcourt and Calabar would beef up, as well as improve businesses in the Eastern Ports, while charging participants to resist every single action that amounts to non-compliance, which will tarnish their names and question their integrity.
Most participants who spoke enthusiastically during the two-day training expressed readiness in ensuring that the SOPs in their agencies are strictly followed and that their individual agencies would come tops in helping to achieve Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) in Nigerian ports, especially those in the Eastern region.
The training is being implemented by the Maritime Anti-Corruption Network (MACN) and the Convention on Business Integrity (CBi), in partnership with the Technical Unit on Government and Anti-Corruption Reforms (TUGAR), Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and the Nigerian Shippers Council (NSC).
Ends/