Fesarta addresses regional road transport issues

THE FEDERATION of East and Southern African Road Transport Associations (FESARTA) is a body representing the common interests of up to 13 mainly southern African countries. It was established in the early 1990s by larger transport operators who decided to form an association that would address major regional issues within their industries and take them up with the authorities. The initial organisation was named the Federation of Regional Road Freight Associations, by member associations of Malawi, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Subsequent to this, operator associations from Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Swaziland, Mozambique, Uganda and Tanzania joined. Continuing efforts are being made to bring Angola and Kenya into the fold. Today its membership includes: Botswana Hauliers' Association, Lesotho Transport Association, Road Transport Operators' Association (Malawi), FEMATRO (Mozambique), Namroad (Namibia), Road Freight Association (South Africa), Swaziland Truckers' Association, Fedhaul (Zambia), Tanzania Truck Owners' Association, Uganda Commercial Truck Owners' Association and the Transport Operators' Association (Zimbabwe). The overall picture of transportation into Africa is one of upbeat nations, but there are operational problems. Here the executive officer of the Federation of East and Southern African Road Transport Associations (FESARTA), Barney Curtis, outlines the state of play for FTW. FTW: What are the critical areas where there are problems within the region. Fesarta: At the moment we have one area where the ball is being dropped and that is USAID. It has been a very strong supporter of initiatives in the transport sector such as the project which drew up the Protocol on Transport, Communications and Meteorology in 1998 and 99. They have a lot of projects on the go which they commit themselves to for five years at a time, with the last one from 1999-2004. But at the review when their contract ended in 2004, the new contract does not seem to be as proactive, and that is affecting us quite severely. Its finances come through their Southern African Global Competitiveness Hub. There is also an East African competitiveness initiative that is run from Nairobi but I do not have much direct contact with them. That hub initiated and got involved with projects on the Dar-es-Salaam corridors. Everything is corridors and USAID went a long way to facilitating extraneous factors to developing corridors such as third party insurance, interface between yellow card and fuel levy systems and customs etc. It just seems that they are not being as proactive as they used to be. So we are not getting the regular communication; we are not getting meetings, conferences and workshops on these issues to take development forward; and we are not getting the financial support for these initiatives. I don’t get much across my desk from USAID and that’s a shame because we had a momentum and that seems to be subsiding. Be that as it may, what is strong at the moment is the World Bank Sub-Saharan African Transport Policy Program (SSATP) and FESARTA has shifted its focus towards it. FTW: Are the World Bank Sub-Saharan African Transport Policy Program objectives different from USAID? No, the objectives are the same. The objective of the SSATP program is fairly concise with a focus on poverty reduction. With reduction you need to lower the cost of transport which needs to become more efficient. And that’s where the transport initiatives come in. There is a 2004-2007 work plan and a 2005 action plan which FESARTA is working towards. That action plan includes most of the things USAID was involved in or may still be, but it includes these items and is funded mainly through the European Union and other sources. There are probably a few problems to get this process up and running properly, and there is an action plan in a matrix form. Probably the most important item on that matrix plan is the observatory programme and, as the word suggests, it is an information gathering programme. That started on the Northern corridor, that’s from Mombasa through to Kampala. It has not been that successful and FESARTA is keen to use the experiences of that project to assist SADC to develop an improved system. The programme is going to be fairly widespread and FESARTA will be involved on the North-South Corridor from Durban through Beit Bridge and Groblerburg/Martins Drift, to the Copperbelt, Lubumbashi and Blantyre. What is being finalised at this time is a contractor to be appointed to go out and to determine exactly how the observatory programme will be carried out. We are presently waiting for the final report from the Northern corridor and it should be noted that the Southern African Development Community (SADC) is actioning this. Remember the SSATP programme for poverty reduction aimed at sub-Saharan Africa works through the regional economic communities such as SADC and COMESA (Common Market for East and Southern Africa). So SADC is the leading player in the observatory programme as far as we are concerned, and once that report comes down from the Northern corridor we will get involved in determining how the observatory is carried out and how we gather the information that is needed. You must appreciate that before you intervene on a corridor with an initiative you need information, you need to know what the problem is, why you are intervening and what you are trying to achieve. So that’s probably the major focus of the SSATP programme at this stage. The Beit Bridge Task Team, which you may have heard of, will be absorbed into the observatory programme. Remember we are talking regionally here; we are not talking about within a company trying to make something happen. It is therefore understandable that it is pretty difficult to get regional consensus and make something happen. FTW: Problems there are, but are you succeeding with say the Beit Bridge Task Team? I believe we are in as much as the importance of the task team is gaining credibility. The players/ stakeholders at the task team have agreed and identified those areas that need attention and we are now putting percentages and times to the action plan matrix so we can say it took so much time to get that truck through SA customs for example. Or it took so much time to clear immigration, or it took so much time to physically get across the border, so we can monitor and identify where the problems are. We know where the problems are generally but must be more specific and say why it is taking five hours to get a truck across that border, where is the hold up? We are also identifying people responsible for taking forward the recommendations to remedy the situation. This is the sort of thing we are focusing on with our action plan matrix. FTW: What about overloading? FESARTA has been involved pretty extensively in setting up the overloading control system at Groblersbrug. The overloading control system is another initiative that fits into the overloading taking place across borders within the region, whereby we are trying to establish if we can control it at the borders by not letting trucks in that don’t comply. Generally overloading in the region will be reduced, and it has been very successful at Groblersbrug. We have effectively stopped the overloading on that route, but humans being what they are have moved to other more porous routes which must be tackled in the interests of infrastructure, competitive rates, safety of the public, other road users and the drivers. The difficulty at Groblersbrug is getting the weighbridge to open before the border post and close after it closes, so trucks are not delayed by the weighing process. FTW: There is a problem where there is inconsistency in the standard of weighbridges across the region. Yes it is a problem we face. I would like to see an accreditation process for transporters in place, whereby an accredited transporter, weighed at the start of his journey, will be cleared through to destination. This would fit in with say a customs licensing process, where truckers now need to be licensed with customs in SA. In Zambia, for example, all truckers into Zambia have to be licensed with Zambia. I would like to see just the Zambian licence for the Zambian transporters, SA licence for the SA transporters and so on throughout the region, and once you are licensed with your customs then you are OK. Then it’s followed by an accreditation programme which customs have here, as you may have heard. And the Road Freight Association (RFA) is working on an accreditation system similar to that for dangerous goods etc. If we could have some sort of regional accreditation system, where truckers are accredited through whichever means, then when they are weighed at whichever border they should be cleared to go through. If they are not accredited they may get stopped. It’s a long way down the line but that’s what we must aim for because, while we have agreed we must stamp out overloading, we also don’t want to hold the truckers up anymore than they have to be held up, and inconvenience them FTW: Does Europe have anything in place like that? We are actually quite advanced in Africa, in our thinking and what we are trying to achieve. Europe has taken longer in its customs arena to achieve what SA is achieving at the moment, I don’t think it has an accreditation programme but I am not sure. FTW: The other issue is that of HIV/Aids. FESARTA has always been a strong supporter of relationships to tackle Aids. Yes, FESARTA wants to see the Trucking Against AIDS project extended into the region. The World Bank is involved in initiatives and I have also had talks with World Vision and the World Food Programme which have Aids initiatives in the region.
I have not seen the outcome of a recent World Vision workshop, so I don’t know if they have accepted our input or if they are willing to put any funding into it. I have also met with The Learning Clinic and the World Food Programme who are putting a wellness centre or two in Malawi. Shadreck Matsimbe, our man in Malawi as, head of the Malawi Road Transport Operators' Association, has been asking for support for Aids initiatives in Malawi. It just so happens that WFP is doing something there, so I have brought Shadreck into it and the first one is being set up. Swaziland is also very keen to get an AIDS initiative going. I believe that the World Bank is considering its case. That country has a very strong motivation to fight Aids and we do have the Swaziland Truckers Association as a FESARTA member so we are helping all we can as part of our drive to get the whole region Aids aware and undertaking wellness clinics for detection of sexually transmitted infections of any sort. But, with these wellness centres, let’s be absolutely clear they cannot simply be put up and abandoned as it is the sustaining of them that is the vital part, and that is how the SA system works. Here The Learning Clinic manages them and arranges for the drugs, the personnel and the important links to the national health system for tracking treatments and control of drugs. Training for education as well as the assembly of accurate stats from the wellness centres is vital to their continued existence. FTW: You haven’t done much on the wellness centres lately, how are they looking? No they are going fine; they have just received millions of rands funding from the Swedish donor agency that is funding a wellness centre in Ventersburg to help take them further and also for the next step of the AIDS project which is voluntary counselling and testing, and treatment and care of people with AIDS. Up till now the project has been treating illnesses in clinics through a general format, such as sexually transmitted infections (STIs), malaria etc and not actually testing for AIDS because once you test for AIDS then you have to have counselling and a whole system that backs it up, and now that has been put in place in the South African sector. FTW: What are the other issues that are burning? Corruption is a big one, and we are never going to solve that completely because it appears that Nigeria and the rest of Africa are getting worse and worse and we are learning. It is a serious problem and whilst we know the government is saying stamp out corruption, it’s just rife out there. So we request that transporters give us details. It is no good just saying there is corruption, tell us at which road block, if you can’t get the name tell us at what robot, at what time, what money did they ask for etc and we will try take that back to the country and try to get it dealt with. Border delays in general are another issue. The Beit Bridge Project is addressing that at that particular border. The intention, with the World Bank programme, is to bring in the observatory programme and to extend the Beit Bridge Initiative to include Chirundu which is another major border problem. So FESARTA will get involved in that too. We can only deal with these borders at each point of the problem, go through it, identify the problems and try to deal with each one. Customs has major problems with smuggling. They are trying to improve efficiency with scanners, the single administrative document, electronic clearance and pre-clearance etc. While you have got those on the positive you have got increased smuggling on the negative, so customs is having to do more and more inspections and to be more and more punitive in its requirements at the borders, so we are giving and taking. If we didn’t have the improved efficiencies and the move for improved efficiency things would be getting worse and worse at the borders. As it is we are probably getting better. The Maputo Corridor Logistics Initiative (MCLI) is a good example of focused initiatives being successful. It is operating from a business perspective, which is a very sensible one, whereas we are all working with governments and all that takes a little longer, and you don’t get all the support you might need. FTW: You have three one-stop border posts designated. What does that mean? One stop means a vehicle stops in only one country at the border post and all customs and immigration formalities are dealt with by both countries during that one stop. It normally means driving through the border post of the exiting country and only stopping at the adjoining country’s border post. On the return leg, the same process applies. In the case of Mozambique, there is confusion between the two countries as to exactly what is to happen. This reflects the problems involved with getting such initiatives going. The important issue is the legality of the customs officer from one country stopping a vehicle and say fining a person or seizing goods in somebody else’s country. FTW: So basically you have three pilots identified, and effectively could those be in place in three years, two years? The three SSATP pilots are Chirundu (Zambia/Zimbabwe ), Malabo/Tororo ( Kenya/Uganda ) and a third in West Africa. I would hope less than three years. Review of legal provisions, preparation of terms of reference, procurement of services and production of the legal and management framework are part of the SSATP 2005 Action Plan and should be completed by the end of the year. It will compare the legal situation and what has to be done to align the bordering countries’ legal framework. FTW: So that’s almost like a final phase? Yes, the legal stuff is the major thing, because the stuff on the ground is not a problem. So hopefully by the end of this year we are going to see something happen.