DESPITE A serious effort to quantify the total value of containerised goods being reported stolen each year, FTW is still left with only that thumbsucking multi-millions generalisation.
The Association of Marine Underwriters of SA (AMUSA) has been attempting to gather in totals of claims made through its members and their insurance companies, but to little avail, according to Durban-based committee member, Hugh Murcell, proprietor of UMS (Underwriting Management Services).
We sent out a letter to everybody, but the reply-ratio has been very poor up to now, he said.
Murcell attributes much of this lack of response to, among other things, the competitive element. He also points to the fact that many member companies are unable to easily extract this data from their computer records in an appropriate form.
This was confirmed by Dave Keeling, marine manager of Cigna Insurance, and the AMUSA man responsible for getting this fact-gathering exercise underway.
He is also looking to try to compile figures around the now massive theft rate at Johannesburg International Airport, where you'll find it almost impossible to get insurance cover for imported cell phones, for example, and at Kazerne, where container theft was rampant until the private sector took a hand in policing unit movements.
But these efforts are not meeting with the immediate return hoped from them.
One of the worries among insurance parties is that individual figures might be made public and used adversely by competitors.
FTW's arrangement with AMUSA is that we will receive only total figures with no indication of the individual sources or quantities of these statistics. At the same time, the compilers of the figures are also bound by an oath on the secrecy of any information released to them.
By quantifying how much theft is costing the industry, the industry can decide how much it can afford to spend on combatting the problem.
