Shipper lambastes ‘inefficient TPT fat-cats’

One of the most outspoken voices on the Cape Town shipping scene has strongly criticised Transnet Port Terminals’ (TPT) top management for the ongoing failure to cope with increasingly poor management performance at the deep sea container terminal in Cape Town. Peter Newton, an exporter of containerised fresh produce and a member, amongst other bodies, of the Cape Town Port Liaison Forum: “In the absence of privatisation it’s abundantly clear that the entire obscenely overpaid echelon of top management will have to be taken out. “Whether a new crop of competent professionals is really necessary is a moot point – because fixing the problem is not rocket-science. There are plenty of able, willing, experienced and competent people (most of them unfortunately ‘suppressed’) in the ranks who could provide most of the operational management skills at a fraction of the cost of the current fat-cat regime.” Although both the private sector bodies meet monthly with the business unit executive of TPT’s Cape Town Container Terminal (CTCT), Newton believes this interaction achieves only limited results. “TPT, instead of looking in the mirror for the source of their problems and consequent port users’ woes, spends an enormous amount of time and effort pointing fingers at others, notably the shipping lines, while at the same time always being careful to keep the lines away from other port users as far as possible,” he told FTW. The current whipping boy, he reckoned, is the recently introduced Navis system. “However Navis is not new – and not even new to SA,” he said. “It’s been in place at New Pier 1 (Durban) for the past year or so, and latterly Port Elizabeth. And although colleagues from both ports were on hand to assist, as were Navis personnel from Oakland, US and the UK, CTCT still managed to make a hash of things despite their data capturers being fast, efficient and backed up! “So we are back to management.” Claims that shipping line inputs are a major source of the now month-long problems are unconvincing, in Newton’s view. “If the correct info was not in the TPT computer, boxes would not be able to be discharged,” he said. “In fairness, in TPT’s confusion, the shipping line input shortcomings to which they refer are probably in respect of releases of import boxes – again the generalisation is merely a smokescreen.” The answer? “Appoint competent people (of whom there are many within TPT ranks) instead of obscenely overpaid incompetents and the situation should improve immeasurably,” Newton said.