By GODFREY BIVBERE & EDIRI EJOH

SEnate Committee on Marine Transport has urged the management of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) to include in its next year’s budget funds for the rehabilitation of Koko, Warri and Calabar ports.

Giving the charge in Lagos when the committee visited NPA as part of its over sight function, Chairperson of the committee, Zainab Kure, said that the call for the rehabilitation of the eastern ports has become necessary following complains from concessionaires and stakeholders in the zone.

According to Kure, “Existing ports at Koko, Warri and Calabar, need urgent attention. Concessionaires are complaining of lack of adequate depth and very poor security. These, they said, have hampered their operations. We wish to ask the NPA management to see these as critical projects that must be addressed with the 2012 budget of the Authority.”

Similarly, the committee chairperson also commended the efforts of the Authority towards new ports development and charged the management to channel greater efforts towards this because the nation needs new ports especially in the eastern part of the country.

Senator Kure also expressed the hope that the proposed ports at Ibaka, Lekki and Olokola among others, should be on stream within the next five years. She further charged the management of NPA to seek partnership with private investors who would build and run them, since government does not have bulk funds for financing such projects.

She noted that with the alleged increase in the volume of cargoes coming into the country, the concessionaires needed to be made to live up to the terms of their agreement with government.

While the Authority on the other hand should also satisfy it’s side of the agreement “through provision of adequate channel depth to allow bigger vessels berth, security at our ports, improvement of road, power and water infrastructure and forming an adequate synergy with all stakeholders to ensure greater dividends to the nation and port users.”

She also charged NPA to look at its bureaucratic set up that impedes efficient communication and correct same.