Call for ‘vote of no confidence’ in DCT management

The battle at the Durban
container terminals has now
reached a pitch, with demands
for an urgent indaba between
the leader of this country’s
forwarding and freight body
and the top man at Transnet.
This because the port
remains completely logjammed,
and the landside
freight industry feels that the
fault remains with Transnet's
poor workforce productivity
and management’s failure to
remedy this.
The call at high level is
for the national chairman
of the SA Association of
Freight Forwarders (Saaff),
Basil Pietersen, to put
before Transnet acting CEO,
Chris Wells, “a vote of
no-confidence in the ability of
Durban Container Terminal
(DCT) management to
identify, address and rectify
the causes of the diabolical
performance of DCT
landside”.
We have noted the
service levels have been
unacceptable. This has been
due to high stack occupancy.
To deal with this we have
added 840 ground slots. This
intervention will help us
create fluidity in our stacks.
In our monthly meeting we
will share some ideas of how
we plan to have some even
distribution of work in all
towers.
Have you looked at the
landside performance of
DCT over the past several
days? There is no other word
to describe it other than
“pathetic”.
Have you also looked at
the stack utilisation and
the level of transhipments?
Obviously our discussions
at our monthly meetings are
falling on deaf ears.
You are favouring the
shipping lines at the expense
of the South African
importer and exporter and
at the same time doing a
good job of putting the
local transport industry out
of business, unless we are
able to raise a “DCT poor
performance surcharge” on
our customers.
Unless remedial action
is taken immediately we
will have no choice but to
canvas our membership
with a view to requesting
the national chairman of
Saaff to put forward to the
Transnet CEO a vote of no
confidence in the ability
of DCT management to
identify, address and rectify
the causes of the diabolical
performance of DCT
landside.
We have been backlogged
with work for the past
two days, creating
major problems with our
customers. We get accused
of not being able to handle
their deliveries on time and
creating overtime when
there is no explanation for
this. Frankly customers
are tired of hearing the
same excuse that the port is
congested all the time.
We have had drivers for
the past three days sitting
for as long as 10 hours at a
time to pick up containers.
Not only are the drivers
getting frustrated, they also
get very tired and restless,
where they become stumped
from carrying out their
duties. At the moment I’m
sure that not just us but all
the transport companies are
currently running at a loss
which needs to be rectified.
The port cannot get
away every time with
the problems that they
cause throughout SA and
around the world giving
us a bad name. We as the
transporters, which are the
most important link in the
chain, need to come together
as one so that we can be
heard.
These delays that have
been caused over the past
few days are still not
resolved. TPT still has not
notified us of the problems
they are having.
The six-hour extension
they are giving us merely
creates more overtime costs.