Importers and Exporters in Tema have scheduled a three-day picketing at five shipping lines from Monday, November 4, 2024.
This, according to the peeved logistics players, is as a result of the shipping lines’ failure to listen to their concerns, after giving the latter a fourteen-day ultimatum.
The logistics players hold the view that the shipping lines operating in Ghana are exploiting them and notices dispatched to all the logistics players state that on Monday, November 4, they must occupy Hapag-Lloyd, ARKAS and Hull Blyth.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, the protesters, who will be drawn from the Ghana Institute of Freight Forwarders (GIFF), the Association of Customs House Agents of Ghana, the Freight Forwarders Association of Ghana and the Customs Brokers Association of Ghana, with several trade union associations and concerned stakeholders, are expected to occupy PIL and COSCO Shipping respectively.
The protestors would be clad in red and hold placards to register their concerns over the three days.
During their first street protest about a month ago, the groups asked the shipping lines to scrap local charges in dollars and complained that the imposition of arbitrary charges, such as local administrative fees, container cleaning fees and empty container fees by the shipping lines were ‘silly’ charges that needed immediate scrapping.
The protestors said the charges, which the shipping lines pegged at GH¢18 to USD1, violated the Bank of Ghana’s regulations on pricing of locally derived services.
On that day, the protestors, with police escorts, marched to the offices of Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), Intermodal Shipping Agencies Ghana Limited, CMA CGM, Grimaldi Ghana Limited and Maersk Line, all shipping lines, to present their petitions which gave the recipients fourteen days to abolish the exploitative charges.
Kwabena Ofosu Appiah, a former GIFF President demanded the immediate cessation of demurrage charges on weekends and public holidays, which he said, unfairly penalised businesses during non-working days when clearance processes were halted.
