The Association of Igbo Maritime Practitioners of Nigeria (AIMPN), Ports Terminal Multi- Services Limited (PTML), conducted a one day workshop titled the 123 of Shipping Company Release and containerization, which was designed to train freight forwarders on the latest shipping procedures in international trade.
In his goodwill message the President General of AIMPN, Chief Damian Obianigwe commended the PTML chapter of the association for organizing the workshop and encouraged other chapters like KLT Airport, Ikorodu to emulate the proactive capacity building of members in PTML through trainings of this kind and enlightenment.
The Registrar, Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN), Mr. Mike Jukwe represented by the Council’s Director in Charge of Education and Research Dr. Alban Igwe also commended the chairman of PTML and all the organisers for seeing the need to train members.
According to him “ CRFFN took it upon itself to engineer capacity training in the industry by bringing trainers from Singapore to train freight forwarders, CRFFN has also secured international accreditation from USA to run diploma programmes that will equip freight forwarders to practice anywhere in the world”.
He said that “right now CRFFN has declared scholarships for 300 candidate practitioners which includes all freight forwarders and you can now avail yourselves the opportunity to obtain Higher Diploma in our partner institutions across the country but as at now we don’t have up to 20 applicants for this scholarship so I hope that you will take advantage of this provisions.
Also at the workshop, the founder of National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders Dr. Boniface Aniegbunam said that freight forwarding is about knowledge.
He urged the association not to stop at just one lecture but consider it crucial to hold frequent trainings of members to impute knowledge of shipping and computerization in Nigeria.
In his words “already shipping containers is a global interest and members must key into it through obtaining knowledge on how best to clear shipping containers with ease, because when you have knowledge it is hard for anyone to cheat you and the only way that you can defend yourself is by acquiring knowledge”.
He appealed to the Federal Government to come to their aid in terms of reducing the cost of doing business inside the ports which will go a long way to impact growth and development in the sector.
He advised that training workshop should be a bi-annual event so as to boost man power development and pledged the sum of N 100,000 as part of his support to the association.
Lecturing at the workshop was the President of NAGAFF, Dr. Eugene Nweke , the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) Assistant Controller PTML command, Stanley E. Nwankwo, the General Manager PTML, Babatunde O. Keshinro among others
