Face masks flown into OR Tambo (ORT) International Airport have become lucrative contraband with significant volumes of air cargo disappearing through the cracks of a crooked system run by corrupt people who seemingly don’t care that ground handling services at the airport could collapse, according to a Freight News source.
Earlier today a freight forwarder said theft at ORT had reached critical levels with masks that have become compulsory facial wear under Covid-19 lockdown regulations becoming “a free-for-all.
“Every day masks are flowing into OR Tambo and every day they disappear.”
One of their clients, said the forwarder, who spoke to Freight News on condition of anonymity, recently had about 50% of his cargo simply go missing.
“We asked officials and they said they would investigate. Eventually they came back and said they had searched everywhere and didn’t know where to look anymore. Ultimately there was nothing we could do. It was just gone.”
In another incident the same freight forwarder had to explain to an importer that 110 boxes had gone missing.
“How does it happen? Who is responsible for such incompetence and how are we supposed to explain that to our clients? The thing to do is to put in a claim but we know we’re not going to get it.”
Asked whether they had taken the problem up with the Airports Company of SA (Acsa), he said it was pointless.
“Acsa won’t do anything about it. The problem is that the airport is run by thieves and no one really cares. Thinking it will help to talk to someone higher up is like thinking it would help to bang your head against a brick wall.”
Adding to their frustrations, said the freight forwarder, was the extremely slow pace of cargo processing where it was actually being done.
“The problem is that ground handling at ORT is based on old facilities, old infrastructure, and old ideas. You cannot solve modern-day problems like that,” he said, referring to combatting the coronavirus and the lockdown regulations affecting freight.
Representing a company that can afford to employ a team of drivers who can relieve each another as they wait to draw cargo, the freight forwarder said some smaller companies were not going to make it.
“Sometimes we wait for three days before our drivers pick up cargo. Smaller forwarders with one or two drivers are not going to make it. If it carries on like this some of us are going to be out of business by the end of the year.”
Commenting on recent reports about Aero-Link Consulting and the accusations levelled at the company for the ground-handling chaos it allegedly caused, the forwarder said “they lost total control.
“Staff had to be pulled in from other service providers to come and help them.” This was corroborated by Mike Walwyn of the SA Association of Freight Forwarders (Saaff).
“What’s worrying is that very little air freight is actually coming in at all at the moment and they (Aero-Link) can’t handle it. Imagine when air freight starts picking up as we move into lower stages of the lockdown, what then?”
Such was the heated anger directed at Aero-Link by frustrated agents and clients, the freight forwarder said, that in one of the calls his company managed to get answered the consultancy’s representative said: “You’re the first person I’m talking to today who’s not swearing at me.”
With inbound volumes now slowly on the increase, flight availability is falling well short of growing demand and freight rates are spiking beyond affordability.
“The per-kilo charge for air freight coming in has gone from around $2 to $11, at an exchange rate of about R19 to the dollar. And with boxes disappearing almost as soon as they’re offloaded, the odds of doing business are overwhelming.
“Corrupt ground handlers and the resulting cost of doing business could be the final nail in the coffin of imports at ORT,” the forwarder said.