New ruling on transport emergency cards gazetted

Local version of tremcard declared illegal
ALAN PEAT
NO OTHER transport emergency cards apart from the Cefic (European chemical industry council) Tremcard are legal in South Africa, according to Eddie Crane of Dangerous Goods Legislation Consultants (trading as EC Logistics). In two government gazettes on November 15 (numbers 29389 and 29390), the minister of transport, Jeff Radebe, withdrew two recently published SA Bureau of Standards (SABS) SANS standards – 1518 and 10231. “One of the documents affected by this decision,” he said, “is that the locally conceived version of the transport emergency card – in SA entitled “Trec” – is now an illegal document. The only legal emergency card, says the department of transport, is the Cefic Tremcard.” If any other versions are being carried in the cab of the vehicle, he added, the owner could be prosecuted for carrying dangerous goods illegally, and would find that he is not covered by his insurance. Also on the illegal list are photocopies of the Cefic Tremcard and any that are reproduced by companies other than licensed commercial suppliers and individual Cefic licence holders. The department’s argument, Crane told FTW, is that there is no legislation in SA accrediting the compilers of the various locally produced versions of the emergency cards, like Trec. And, he added, they could actually be produced by an office clerk without any technical or chemical background and could have dangerous errors concealed in the wording. And, with the Cefic Tremcard being a copyrighted document, only the larger road transport companies can afford to buy their own Cefic licences. But, for the smaller players in the SA market, there are four licensed suppliers of original Tremcards, Crane said – EC Logistics in Durban and Johannesburg; the SABS in Pretoria; Dolphin Labeltech in Sasolburg; and Bruno Logistics in Cape Town.