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Logistics
Road/Rail Freight

Ignorant public sector stands in way of border congestion solutions

21 Feb 2025 - by Anonymous
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Dear Freight News team

I read with interest your post from February 14, “SADC members call for corridor-wide approach to border challenges.”

The first paragraph reads: “Member states of the Southern African Development Community have called for a corridor-wide approach to infrastructure development and trade facilitation to address emerging challenges along the entire North-South corridor.”

A paragraph on or so, it continues with another wordy gem: “A corridor-wide approach hinges on the pillars of customs and trade facilitation, transport and trade-related infrastructure, security and immigration. The meeting further recommended an action matrix, whose main recommendations will ensure trade facilitation along the North-South corridors.”

I’m particularly amused by the following phrase, “action matrix”, but have to wonder, what does it really mean?

To be very honest, it sounds as if someone contracted Deepak Chopra as a speechwriter for an SADC executive.

The problem with corridors in our region is that the public sector representatives whose job it is to help the cross-border logistics community with notoriously problematic borders, such as Kasumbalesa, are the same overpaid people who couldn’t point out the front end of a truck if their lives depended on it.

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