The Council of Maritime Truck Unions and Associations (COMTUA) has dissolved the Board of Trustees (BOT) and management team , while a new caretaker committee of six members has been Inaugurated to oversee the affairs of the group for three months.
The Caretaker Committee now has Mr. Aloga Ogbogo , Executive Secreatry of the Nigerian Association of Road Transport Owners (NARTO) as chairman.
The new committee was Inaugurated following the abysmal performance of the former management team and BoT members
A – 3 month mandate has been issued to the new committee to fashion out modalities on how to produce new executives.
Recall that COMTUA was inaugurated to assist government agencies and security operatives to decongest the port corridors to enable free movement of cargoes.
Speaking with our correspondent after the meeting, President General of the Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria (MWUN), Comrade Adewale Adeyanju said his group had intended to withdraw from COMTUA owing to the fact the the committee was not living up to its billing.
According to him., MWUN joined the Council at the peak of gridlock on the port corridors to help reduce the effect of the traffic on his members .
The union’s boss reiterated that: “There was a change in the sense that the BOT and management team need to put in place good structure through a caretaker committee jointly appointed for three months.
The resolution reached by all is for the new committee to work assidiously to put structure of COMTUA in place and the six members all agreed that we should continue to work together.
“If trucks are not coming, the way it should, how do you expect the dockworkers to carry out their responsibilities? How do you expect agents to clear their containers? How do you expect shipping lines to bring in their containers?
“These factors will lead to demurrage and that is the purpose of collaborating with these associations. Ordinarily, my job is in the port. I work ashore and onboard vessels but because of the gridlock we experience that is why we said we should collaborate with them to see how we can reduce the gridlock.
“But we find out that some of the associations are using it for personal gains that is why we wanted to pull out but we have dissolved the former board and they have constituted a caretaker committee so that they can put up their modus operandi that is going to help the industry to move forward.”
Confirming the development, Coordinator of the dissolved management team, Mr .Stephen Okafor said that management and BOT members were dissolved because of lapses discovered in their operations.
“The resolution is that COMTUA will continue to collaborate and in doing that, we also discovered many lapses both at BoT level and management level and going forward, the house has unanimously dissolved the two bodies and a caretaker committee has been inaugurated with members drawn from each if the associatiins.
“The Committee is to come up with plans on how COMTUA can move forward and they were given three months to do that,” he submitted.
COMTUA is made up truck owning associations from the maritime sector.
The associations are: Road Transport Employers Association of Nigeria (RTEAN), National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), Nigerian Association of Road Transport Owners (NARTO) and Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria (MWUN).
Others include: Corporate Fleet Owners and Amalgamation of Container Truck Owners of Nigeria.
By Roland Ekama
