Lagos — Importers and agents last week experienced shortage of cargo handling equipment at the Container Terminal port, the area that will soon be handed over to Ap Moller which emerged winner of the bidding exercise conducted by the Bureau of Public Enterprise.

Our correspondent who was at the terminal noticed a good number of importers and agents who lamented the shortage of plants to position their containers for examination and loading.

The agents were seen running after plant operators, promising monetary rewards in order to ensure attention.

A staff of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) at the Terminal told our Correspondent that the problem has been recurring in the past few weeks.

According to the official, only about 10 percent of 17 cargo handling equipment at the terminal were working as at Friday last week.

But the source said that the situation was an improvement as there was a near total breakdown of plants working at the terminal earlier.

Our source explained that the reason why there has been shortage of cargo handling equipment was as a result of the decision of the NPA management to stop acquisition of new equipment because of the ongoing concessioning of the ports.

It is expected that the private investors will have to provide necessary cargo handling equipment once they take over the management of the terminals.

According to the Minister of Transport, Dr. Abiye Sekibo, this will be up to August this year before the terminals which bids have been completed can be handed over to the winners.

It was gathered that what the NPA management has been doing is to repair existing equipment, an exercise that has suffered some set back because of lack of necessary spareparts for the plants.

Our source said on Friday that some spareparts arrived on Thursday, and expressed hope that most of the broken down plants will be repaired soon.

Our source disclosed that except the problem is addressed as fast as possible, the shortage of equipment may lead to a more serious congestion at the ports.

The terminal had few weeks ago suffered congestion as a result of increasing number of overtime cargo in the ports.

The Customs, it has gathered has since identified the containers with a view to auctioning them soonest.

Many of the overtime cargoes were goods which came without Clean Report of Inspection (CRI) since the importers did not go through pre-shipment inspection.