Crisis plan moves into gear as CT congestion continues

Ever-lengthening delays and documentary and processing difficulties at the Cape Town container terminal (CTCT) have forced the local shipping community to put a crisis plan into gear. According to Mike Walwyn of shipping specialists Seaboard, and chairman of the CT Port Liaison Forum (PLF), the host of congestion problems taking place recently has mostly been blamed on the new Navis port operations system installed at Transnet Port Terminals (TPT). But, he suggested, this excuse has become rather lame after constant repetition. And vessel and truck delays, he added, are becoming unsustainably long. “There are substantial delays inside the terminal,” he told FTW. “For trucks, delays are regularly running out to six hours and beyond, and it’s an on-going process and getting critical for the landside movement of containers.” It led to the members of the PLF – from all the facets of the freight shipping industry – putting pressure on the representatives of TPT and the Transnet National Ports Authority (TNPA), and getting agreement that things had indeed reached critical proportions. Said Walwyn: “At the last of our thenmonthly meetings, all the stakeholders (including the port authorities in all their forms) decided on crisis management. “We now meet weekly with TPT and TNPA to discuss problems that urgently require attention, and the agreement is that the port authorities will come back to us with their plans to deal with each issue.” He suggested that it was a co-operative type of arrangement, where all the sides got to present their cases before final corrective action could be taken. But one problem remains unresolved, and may require ministerial intervention, according to Walwyn. “There appear to be serious management issues at the terminal,” he said. “This is the firm, collective opinion of all the private sector elements in the forum, and it has been made clear to Transnet. “The general feeling is that an injection of new blood would benefit the terminal.”