New marine manager puts profits before meal breaks

Ray Smuts SHIPS COME first in the Port of Cape Town, not meal breaks, and those who think otherwise are in for a rude awakening as Hlubi Mzamo is out to change that line of thinking. "If I were a customer I would find it totally unacceptable that tug or berthing crews are taking their meal break when a vessel is waiting to be taken care of," says Cape Town's recently-appointed marine operations manager. In this capacity he is responsible for pilotage and tugging, berthing services and ships' repair in the port, while harbour master Eddie Bremner is charged with safety issues, berth planning, environmental concerns, vessel traffic and the like. "I am thrilled Hlubi is here," says affable Bremner. Effecting change, says the soft-spoken Michaelhouse and University of Cape Town-educated Mzamo, is all about getting the 350 people for whom he is responsible to change their way of thinking. "It's all about mindset. They have to work this as a business rather than as a division. Portnet is dead, and that has to be brought home to workers. "All along, Portnet has moved gently from being a civil entity to a State-owned enterprise and marine has been a division; the move is to make it a subsidiary and run it profitably as a business. Mzamo makes it clear he intends implementing certain measures which will involve negotiations with workers, the first being current shift patterns, the other overtime which has incurred a huge bill. "I would like us to work to a different shift pattern. I fail to see why someone should say ÔI must stop at this point and go to eat' while a ship is waiting. That's part of changing a certain culture that this should be treated as a business." Another priority of marine services concerns keeping the customer happy. "If you look after the customer you will be looked after." Mzamo says a concept currently being looked at is "ring-fencing" as in Europe where everything falling within marine services is privatised. But before a decision can be taken here a correct tariff structure needs to be arrived at for the different services to determine their profitability and actual value. As to whether a dry dock should be sited at Richards Bay or Cape Town - tenders have already been called for such a facility at Richards Bay - he says: "There has been discussion on that but my feeling is the dry dock should be here due to an increasing number of fishing vessels calling and the close proximity of Saldanha. (The latter has no dry docking). "The discussion on whether the ship's repair business should be part of what we are responsible for is still going on at head office, but in the meantime we will be looking after the existing structure. Only when a decision has bee taken will we know whether ship repairs falls under its own business unit headed by someone else."