Government has called on the road freight sector to provide an alternative solution to the high cube conundrum – other than amending legislation.
John Motsatsing, a director at the Department of Transport (DoT), told industry stakeholders last week that the high cube issue was not new and had been on the table for a number of years. Come January 1, 2019 blanket exemption for all ISO containers where the overall height exceeds 4.3m comes to an end when a moratorium implemented in 2011 is lifted.
“The Minister of Transport will make a final decision on this high cube issue, but so far during the engagement that I have had with the sector and with the industry at large there is only one thing that is being put forward – and that is that there must be a regulation amendment,” said Motsatsing.
Speaking at a transport committee meeting at the Cape Chamber of Industry and Commerce recently, Motsatsing said at present there was no move towards amending the legislation to allow 12-metre-long high cube containers to be transported at anything but 4.3m. Measuring 2.9m, high cube containers when transported on the back of a flat deck trailer exceed the height of 4.3m as prescribed by South African law and measure in at around 4.6m.
“I don’t see you guys saying this is how we will assist you as the regulators in solving this problem. What has been put on the table is that there are cost implications and there is going to be chaos so government must amend the legislation,” he said. “It does not go down well when you are pleading with someone to take such an approach. If we just insist and tell the minister there are going to be job losses and blockages at the harbour you are putting him in a corner and you don’t know how he will react in that corner.”
Motsatsing said industry was therefore best advised to come up with workable solutions other than a legislation amendment.
“The height for moving 12-metre-long containers with a 2.9 metre height by law is 4.3m. We are not banning high cubes,” he said. “Regulation 224 makes it illegal to transport high cube containers on flat deck trailers due to the fact that the trailer deck height is normally 1500-1590mm from road level. To that end it is our view that the issue is not the regulation 224 but the flat deck trailers that the carriers and operators use instead of the low bed or skeletal trailers.”
He said claims that government at the time of implementing the moratorium would do research to prove why the country was enforcing a 4.3m height regulation were untrue.
“I was in the meeting and there was no undertaking to do any studies,” he said. “The question that has to date never been answered by the industry is what has the industry done from the implementation of the moratorium on 20 September 2011 to date?”
He said his office would facilitate any solutions from industry and put them to the minister who would be the ultimate decision-maker in the high cube saga. Cape Port Liaison Forum (PLF) chairman, Mike Walwyn, said he believed some progress was made at the meeting even if it was not necessarily what industry wanted to hear.
“I do think we have made progress and that is positive.” Not everyone shared this view. Several attendees told FTW they could not understand government’s insistence on keeping the height at 4.3m when it was clearly becoming an international norm to have height regulation at 4.6m.
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Industry is best advised to come up with workable solutions other than a legislation amendment. – John Motsatsing
