By Adedapo Adesanya
The Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST) has said that the new regulations being put in place are aimed at protecting genuine courier and logistics operators.
The agency said that the new policy which was approved by the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Mr Isa Pantami, under whose ministry the service falls, was to chase out unregistered operators.
The policy has since faced condemnation and backlash from business owners who lamented the hardship its implementation will bring to their businesses.
NIPOST in a statement signed by its spokesperson, Mr Franklin Alao, said the condemnations by some people especially online were uncalled for, adding that nowhere in the world is the ease of doing business aided when businesses operate without registration with the appropriate regulatory agency.
Mr Alao said genuine business owners who know what the logistics business entails would not be part of the protests against the new regulations.
“The new regulations were not planned to frustrate ease of doing business rather they aimed to promote the growth of MSMEs. It would create a sense of sanity, consumer-service provider trust,” Mr Also said.
He said the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy gave the new regulations what he called “serious considerations” before those charges were arrived at and the need for categorizing the operating license.
He added, “It is part of the strategies to ensure effective service delivery as consumers would know the capacities of the operators they are dealing with.
“Where there can be issues is where a courier/logistics company with a capacity for a local government area wants to operate on a state-wide or nation-wide scale. This would not be acceptable.
“If your license is for a state, limit your operations to the state/region.”
Speaking on the fees to be paid by operators for new licenses or renewal, Mr Alao said, “And you can see that the registration fee and renewal fees are according to the category of the operation of an operator.
“Kindly note that consumers of the courier service would be better off as this will drive charlatans out of the industry.
“Genuine and serious operators would come back to celebrate this move by the NIPOST.”
In recent times, there has been an emergence of several logistics courier operators with many of them said to be unregistered for business.
NIPOST said it would defeat the concept of ease of doing business if logistics companies are allowed to multiply with no regulations guiding their operations.
Modupe Gbadeyanka