The Association of Maritime Truck Owners (AMATO) has raised alarm over alleged extortion, outrageous fines, and charges by some government agencies and individuals, crippling their businesses.
In a press release issued by the association, AMATO cited methods of extortion, including street urchins and state actors along port access roads, excessive fines for traffic offenses, and exorbitant tow charges.
These practices, AMATO claims, always leads to disaffection between truckers and regulators, inability to maintain trucks to safety standards, impoverishment of truckers and enriching select individuals
” The displeasing Extortion, Outrageous Fines and charges are further Impoverishing Truckers, Ironically some individuals are Enriching themselves and smiling to their bank with Truckers hard earned proceeds”
In the press statement, AMATO appeals with Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu to investigate the “Abandon Team” for alleged underhanded operations while pleading with the NPA and the NCS to curtail extortion along port access roads and also the State, NPA, NCS, Truckers to establish a committee to regulate MOT Tow Operators and extortion
” We respectfully request that the Lagos State Governor, Mr Babajide Sanwoolu kindly wade in to unravel the perceived underhand handling by the so called Abandon team whose operation is Draconian in nature. This is so because on various occasions our on motion trucks are callously hijacked from drivers under the guise that such trucks were abandoned which is then made to suffer a fine that gulps between 100k to 300k or more as the case may be”
