By Providence Ayanfeoluwa

The holding bay initiative is a brainchild of Council of Maritime Transport Unions and Associations, COMTUA, said the association’s President, Adeyinka Aroyewun.

Aroyewun explained that before COMTUA came into existence, a lot of issues were associated with the maritime transport industry.

He stated: “We were faced with traffic gridlock, congestion, returning of empty container boxes. It was through COMTUA that the introduction of holding bay, whereby our members do not have to return the container empty boxes to the port, but to holding bays. ‘‘This have saved the industry a lot of stress in the area of container deposit.

“Before now, when you load a cargo, after the discharge of the cargo, you would be on the road for weeks before you return the empty boxes, the importer is incurring container demurrage and the truck is also stocked.

“But, with the introduction of holding bays, what we do now is that we do not take empty boxes to the port; we return to various holding bays across Lagos state and outside Lagos. This saved us a lot of turnaround time and this was an initiative and idea or suggestion COMTUA gave to the Nigerian Shippers Council, NSC, and Nigerian Port Authority, NPA’’.