Last week’s standoff between the trucking industry and the government of Manila over City Hall’s imposition of a daytime truck ban has had an immediate impact on small business – a group of rice millers from San Jose City and Talavera in Nueva Ecija.
A consignment of equipment for a 12MW biomass-fed power plant the millers are setting up has been caught up in the mess at the port because of the trucking holiday staged by haulers to protest the truck ban.
Asked by PortCalls in an interview about his company’s concerns, Royal Cargo chief operating officer Elmer Francisco Sarmiento replied, “port congestion,” citing the case of the millers.
Sarmiento said the equipment are now stuck at the port incurring demurrage.
“I offered to take out the cargo by barge and ship it to Subic or Bataan, then truck it from there to Nueva Ecija,” he explained. “But when the millers saw the transport cost, they balked. They said they couldn’t afford it. Now they’re incurring demurrage.”
At presstime, there was no word on whether the cargo had already been withdrawn and delivered.
Image courtesy of sirikul / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
