Some progress in North-South corridor self-regulation project

A proposed project to pilot self-regulation for road transport operators on the North-South corridor has taken another step forward. According to Barney Curtis, executive director of the Federation of East and Southern African Road Transport Associations, the Terms of Reference for the SADC-led North-South Corridor pilot project are being prepared. And following a recent meeting, updated terms are due to be circulated shortly. Self-regulation was previously exclusively confined to SA under the Road Transport Management System (RTMS). But unlike RTMS, self-regulation in countries to the North of South Africa will have to involve customs. The objective, says Curtis, is for two to three transporters each from Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa to participate in the project. He pointed out that the prevalence of overloading in the South African forestry industry was 4.5% in October. In sugar it was 5.5%. This compared with over 20% in Mpumalanga. “Self-regulation was included in the Tripartite Transport and Trade Facilitation Programme Annual Work Plan and was also recommended by East African member states during the project on load limits and overloading control,” said Curtis. “This demonstrates that governments have accepted that it’s important to introduce self-regulation.” The objective is for the guidelines to be integrated into all self-regulation strategies – and they will therefore be integrated into the NSC pilot project. An important factor that has been noted is that neither the existing RTMS strategy, nor the driver health guidelines, were suited to owner-drivers and small companies. “This was because the requirements of both were too onerous for the smaller transporters to comply with,” said Curtis. “All of the over 1000 trucks accredited to the RTMS so far, are from large companies.” New self-regulation strategies, the RTMS and the driver health guidelines need to find a solution to this problem, he said.