…As officials train on SOPs.
With the recent training of Port officials based at ports and terminals in the Port-Harcourt zone, a strengthened compliance function in the Maritime sector is expected.
The Programme Manager, Convention of Business Integrity (CBI), Emmanuel Bosah dropped the hint during the two days training of port officials in Port Harcourt.
He said the training programme aimed at strengthening compliance function by all port agencies and operators would help to improve their capacity to understand as well as evaluate compliance failures and successes.
Mr Bosah also said it would make it possible to domesticate a system of consequence for those that failed to follow the process, while improving their capacity to understand, define, detect, respond to, and evaluate compliance failure and successes within their institutions.
On his part, the Information Communication Technology (ICT) leader for CBI and Integrity Organisations (IOs), Maduka Okafor, explained the role of the ICT Desk, including how it has helped to reduce crime in Nigeria.
He decried the low global anti-corruption index rating in the country assuring that they are currently tackling it from the maritime angle in order to bring it down to the barest minimum.
“My own role for this particular project as representative of the Maritime Anti-Corruption Network (MACN) in Nigeria and the CBI is to get all the agencies that operate at the Nigerian seaports and terminals together on a training on how to be compliant with their developed Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs),” Okafor added.
He noted that SOPs training was to keep a check on them so as to remind them to strictly follow their developed and adopted SOPs while discharging their professional duties at the seaports.
He also explained that the high rate of complaints about extortions by the vessel companies and ship captains when vessels arrive at the seaports was drastically reducing.
The major stakeholders at the training were agencies that operate at the seaports such as Nigerians Immigration Service, Nigerian Custom Service, Department of State Service (DSS), Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC), who were expected to go back and train their agencies on the need for compliance.
