Hard days may soon be over for the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) as the Minister of Transport, Sen. Idris Umar has said that the suspension on transaction fee by the Council will soon be lifted.
The Minister said this while commissioning the new secretariat of the Council in Lagos, yesterday. According to him, process is on-going to lift the ban placed on the collection of the fee by the Council. He said, “Any moment from now, there will be a release in that regard.”
In his speech, the Minister who was represented by Mr. Patrick Odey Ekawu, a Deputy Director (ICD), Maritime
Services Department of the Federal Ministry of Transport said that the new office was necessary for the Council to achieve its mandates adding that the present location of the office in Apapa will afford it an opportunity for development of a modern and global competition in freight forwarding business.
On training, he quipped that the Federal Government attached great importance on human capacity building. He stated further that such training would position the staff to contend with emerging global challenges.
Earlier, the Registrar of the Council, Sir Mike Jukwe who during his opening speech enumerated inadequate funding as one of the challenges of the Council pleaded for lifting of suspension on collection of transaction fee which according to him is an Internally Generated Revenue.
However, he said training and re-training of the Council’s workforce for maximum and timely service delivery was on the mandate of the agency.
“Training and re-training of the Council’s workforce For maximum and timely service delivery on our mandate. Council can have professionally qualified and dedicated workforce through training and re-training.
We are committed to this, as the soon to be declared open 2014 staff training and retreat is the third in the series but we also require targeted on the job short and long term training programmes.”
Asked the cost of the rented new secretariat, he waived it by simply saying he could not speak about it at the time.
“I cannot tell you anything abut that one now,” he simply said.
He thereby said that the co-operation and support of all concerned freight forwarding sectors would help to reposition the sector to an enviable height in the country and to compete favourably with comity of nations as well as wealth creation.
