The management of Transit Truck Park, TTP, has said that the introduction of the E-call up scheme has reduced cost of transporting containerized cargoes within the Lagos metropolis by as much as 60 percent while truck turnaround time has also been reduced by 70 percent.
Speaking to newsmen last week in Lagos, Chief Operating Officer of TTP, Mr. Dayo Adeboye, however, noted that there are still hitches at the Mile-2 end of the Apapa-Oshodi Express approach to the ports due to ongoing construction works there.
Adeboye also said that before the intervention of TTP in the management of the movement of vehicles in and out of the Lagos ports, the average turnaround time for Reefer Trucks was two weeks but claimed that it has been reduced to 60 hours which is two and half days.
He stated: “For flatbed and empty containers the average turnaround time for these categories of trucks were two weeks but now reduced to 62 and 90 hours respectively, while export containers now have a turnaround time of 76 hours as against two weeks previously.
“For the cost movement of container out of Apapa but within Lagos metropolis, it cost about N1million to move a 40 ft container from Apapa port to any warehouse or location within Lagos but this has been reduced to N400,000, representing a 60 percent decrease in the cost of moving containers out of the ports.
“While cost of transportation of 40ft containers from Apapa port before was between N1.5 million and N1.6 million, but has come down to between N400,000 and N750,000 while the cost of moving containers within Apapa now attracts as low as N100,000 and N150,000.”
Adeboye explained on a daily basis, about 4,000 trucks are on the port access roads and adjoining streets within and around the Apapa area, most of which have been moved into truck parks scattered around Lagos.
He stated: “There was an average of 4,000 trucks on the roads daily, many of them are static as most of them were parked on the roads and there was truck scheduling. An average of 3,000 trucks are batched and scheduled on a daily basis, while the Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA, has about 70 approved trucks parks that schedule trucks to proceed to ports and these are done via the ‘Eto’ Application.”
