The Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Shippers Council (NSC); Hon Emmanuel Jime, briefing journalists in Lagos on Tuesday accused the importers and freight forwarders of not taking sufficient advantage of the Shippers Complaints Unit (SCU) domiciled under the agency for quick and effective resolutions on most of the challenges they meet in the course of their operations.
The Executive Secretary also revealed that the agency in the past one year has trained 501 staff. Analyzing the figures, Emmanuel Jime stated that, as at June to 0December of 2021, the number of officers trained stood at 280, while from January 2022 till date, is 221 staff in the aspect of complaints handling and resolution. According him the council in 2021 received and handled 518 complaints, while in first quarter of 2022, 118 complaints were received and handled. Jime went on to reveal plans to train more workers abroad in order to prevent the knowledge gap when senior officials retire.
In the E S’s analysis the Council in 2021 was able to recover the sum of N1, 072, 008, 040.90 while in the first quarter of 2022, stakeholders were saved of the sum of N18, 493, 961.70k. Furthermore, he said “there’s actually a need for the industry to come to terms with the understanding that there is a complaints unit that handles complaints for stakeholders.
“So far, I don’t think the industry is taking sufficient advantage of this complaints unit. “We conduct investigation on facts that are available to us. There is the Port Service Support Portal (PSSP) which can be used to reach the council. There is no report sent through the platform that has not been resolved. There is no complaints that lasted more than 24hours on my table.
“The only way we can tackle most of the problems bedeviling the industry is when complaints are filed to us, and we would immediately respond”
The Shippers Council boss in somewhat of a self appraisal, boasted that the level of training members of his staff has acquired in the short period that he was appointed into office has surpassed almost all of his previous predecessors in office put together. “When I came into office, I noticed that there was the need for the morale of the staff to be at its highest in order to get the best out of them, I also discovered that sending staff to as small as a two weeks training is something they valued a lot, it doesn’t only benefit them as individuals, but it ultimately benefits the institution because of the proficiency and knowledge base we can tap from”
He continued with more explicit narratives that “the junior officers in the council are not having the benefits of training, that the senior officers have. Therefore, what happens by the time these senior officers bow out of service? There is going to be a serious knowledge gap. That’s why very soon, we would start sending our staff abroad to do trainings that would empower them to be the kind of Shippers Council staff that these ones who are about to leave had. I do not want any vacuum to exist under my watch. Training is something we take seriously, and the staff are happy that we are moving in that direction” he concluded
