The Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) has started re-routing cocoa beans initially meant to be terminated at the now congested Takoradi Port to its Kaase and Tema take-over centres in a bid to reduce congestion at the port.
The congestion is as a result of the unwillingness cocoa carriers of, to work in agitation for improved services.
The re-routing is part of a series of response strategies initiated by the board to try to normalise operations at the Takoradi take-over centre as loads of cocoa have been left undischarged at that port.
The Public Relations Manager of the COCOBOD, Mr Noah Amenya, who disclosed this to the Daily Graphic, said the board was optimistic of bringing the situation under control in the coming days.
�We are also putting in place some internal offloading arrangements for the weekends to help reduce the waiting times of the License Buying Companies (LBCs) at the Port,� he said.
The Takoradi Port has for the past few weeks been overwhelmed by truck loads of cocoa beans due to the unwillingness of cocoa carriers to work, citing low remuneration from their respective managements.
The situation caused congestion at the port, with some LBCs attempting to organise their driver-mates to offload to enable them cart more into the port. That, however, did not work.
The current impasse at the Takoradi Port trailed a similar one at the Tema port some months ago which caused some ships to return without shipping cocoa they had billed to ship.
�We met with the labour companies from whom we source the carriers and asked them to provide us with adequate and additional labour to handle the work,� the Public Relations Manager of COCOBOD said.
While admitting that the repetition of the situation at the Takoradi port was unfortunate, Mr Amenya stressed that COCOBOD�s call on Uni Control Commodities Limited (UCC), a shipment company whose labour delayed the shipment, to resolve its labour issues was expected to yield results soon.
He thus assured all stakeholders affected by the impasse of COCOBOD�s ability to bring the situation under control for normal loading, offloading and shipment to continue at the Takoradi take-over centre.
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