Johannesburg-based Professional Risk and Asset Management has come up with a cost-effective solution to mitigate risk and aid compliance for exporters from Lesotho – which has become the largest exporter of garments to the US under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa). “It’s an environment unlike any in which we have operated in before,” said operations director Gerhard van Zyl, “and we realised that we would have to bring change to a system that was entrenched in the market. “The theft problem was becoming a national problem and even had the stakeholders in government concerned.” The company has formulated methods to record and monitor the complete process from loading, through to CTO or pre-advice at ports, relying on technology to bring the process together. “This allowed us to formulate a complete audit trail to help determine potential issues. And once we got to that point, we realised that we needed to provide live locations on the vehicles. “We have developed a GPS tracker that gives live locations, allowing us to monitor loads leaving Lesotho. Clients also receive special logins to enable them to track their own loads.” But it was also necessary to get the buy-in of local transport operators, many of whom have one or two trucks, said Van Zyl. “Many of the truckers were unaware of the very easy processes that could be implemented to benefit their route security and bring them up to standard with the rest of the market. With that in mind we started the Lesotho Transporters’ Guild and we have been able to institute change from within the market to the benefit of all the stakeholders.” Through various countermeasures, the company has secured GIT insurance for manufacturers – resulting in a safer route all-round, according to Van Zyl. “We have not had any losses on the route and are continuing to look for innovative solutions. For example, with the new Solas Container Weight Verification requirement, we have been able to use weighing equipment at the origin – and because of our very secure audit, the ports accept this weighing method.”
