Amaechi Denies Agency Heads Full Holiday Break

 * His worries for transport sector

* CTN to recommence operation  this January

Apparently worried that no concrete achievement has been recorded in the last one year of his tenure, the Minister of Transport, Rt. Hon. Rotimi Amaechi is exerting his energy in all directions to ensure that the transport sector experiences some evident change.

Following this, he was said to have denied some of the heads of maritime parastatals the opportunity to take their annual leave in full during the yuletide because he wanted them around to attend certain decisive meetings for different projects to take off.

MMS Plus gathered that some of the projects the Minister would want to see working immediately, if possible, include the take off of at least, one Inland Cargo Depot (ICD) project within the first or second quarter of this year; the deployment and operations of Cargo Tracking Note (CTN); implementation of the National Single Window project and the consummation of the national fleet initiative.

Amaechi had thought that by now the proposed national fleet would have taken off as planned, it was gathered. But seeing that the process of refloating a national fleet or carrier is seemingly herculean, denying him the opportunity of making a leadership statement with it, he opted to see other projects through.

Consequently, according to our source, he relocated his office to Jos, Plateau State to ensure that the planned integration of the railway system with the ongoing dry port project in Jos was achieved.

Similarly, Amaechi has also directed that the stagnated CTN project should commence operations, following the resolution of the contending issues in the project among all the external and internal stakeholders in the project. As a result, CTN operation is expected to recommence this week in Lagos. A visit to the office of the consulting company, ATPMS in Lagos showed that the workers are expectant and ready to serve the public.

It was equally gathered that the Minister is working assiduously to ensure that the Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC) transmutes to National Transport Commission (NTC) because the council is the most suitable agency among all the transport parastatals in the country, with the additional reason that it has already been designated a port regulator and has relatively appreciable capacity to discharge the duties.

The Minister was also said to have seen NSC option as being very economical for the government, considering the enormous task of building an agency from the scratch and against the background of calls for the mergers of some of the numerous agencies of the Federal Government.