There has been a rapid decline on the inflow of overseas’ carrier- vessels on Freetown’s seaport.

A lot of the bigger cargo vessels which used to be coming into Sierra Leone’s capital have now ceased.

These popular cargo ships: GRIMALDI LINES, GRIMALDI BRASILLA LINE, GRIMALDI LINES ARGENTINA, MAERSK LINE, have been noticed to have stopped coming to Freetown Seaport, Queen Elizabeth II Quay.

A resident close to Africa’s deepest but smallest habour, Queen Elizabeth II Quay, shares his experience with Africa24 about the sharp declined on cargo ships navigating the Atlantic sea to Freetown’s port.

“Between 2008 and 2012, you will see ships waiting in turn as they lay at anchor some meters away from the seashore,” says Alpha Kamara, a fisherman at Moa-wharf community, in the east of Freetown, which is just a stone throw to the port.

“There are other names of much bigger cargo ships that I have not been seeing coming again like in those days,” he emphasized.

Kamara has been living at Moa-wharf for over thirty years as a fisherman. He said when cargo ships usually come at the port they the fishermen got employed sometimes as labourers.

“The experience was awesome as we sometimes took almost two weeks unloading goods from containers,” he remembered.

But now, he said: “Things are different altogether because there are not many ships coming again.”

The absence or decline is also partly because a private French company, Bollore Logistics, has taken over the shipping port since the end days in office of ex-President Ernest Bai Koroma.

The new company brought in a different approach in the management of the port.

After Freetown Container terminal extension, Water Quay, as the locals would call it, came under the management of a French firm.

Bollore’s recruitment procedures drastically changed as it operates as a public utility company in which government plays a supervisory role and generate taxes in the form of revenues to run the state.

Instead of randomly hiring men outside to unload goods especially whenever cargo ships bring in huge quantity of goods, Bollore is relying on the service of a team of workers recruited by the company.

 

High custom fears

The COVID pandemic has led to several challenges on world’s economies. Some countries especially developing nations are still struggling to peak up. There have been rapid decline on the rate of cargo vessels coming into Africa.

The COVID virus was first detected in Wuhan, China in late December, 2019 and it later spread to other countries in the world.

COVID killed many people in the world.  To suppress the virus from rapidly spreading, international restrictions on movement by people were effectively imposed within and between countries. Airports closed down operations, ships couldn’t navigate the seas to other seaports in the world.

Since COVID cases started decreasing in the world, most restrictions were relaxed in the middle of the year 2021. However, there are concerns by Sierra Leoneans that customs tariffs at Water Quay have still remain to be ever expensive in the sub-region.

People are paying a lot of money to secure their goods from the port.

A customer had paid above US$ 18,000 for shipping and clearing a fully loaded 20 ft. container from Water Quay in September, 2021, according to figures by Awoko newspaper.

And, since the port has been privatized and controlled by a French company, custom tariffs may have doubled more than in the past.

It means importers would now have to pay more to get their goods out of the port.

And the decline of shipping vessels at the port could also be attributed to owners of vessels being charged to pay high for anchoring the harbour.

Sierra Leone operates under a free market economy but not on a free custom duty.

And this is affecting a whole lot of the business people in Sierra Leone whose goods must have to be shipped home on these cargo vessels who are similarly being charged by the port management to pay huge sums for anchoring the harbour.

“You just can’t compare Sierra Leone to Guinea where things are very cheaper than in Sierra Leone because the Guineans pay less as custom charges on freight. Here government is not helping its people”says a renowed business man.