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Warehouse 1 & Office Block D3 Isando Industrial Park Gewel Street, Isando Tel: + 27(0) 11 398 4900 Fax: + 27 (0) 11 392 1058 info@kapele.co.za
V I S I T :
W W W . K A P E L E . C O . Z A
FRIDAY 21 May 2010 NO. 1911
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MAKING THE WORLD A SMALLER PLACE
FREIGHT & TRADING WEEKLY
The Freight Community’s Weekly Newspaper for Import / Export decision makers – on subscription
Three-month backlog looms Nightmare scenario of 50 waiting ships plays out By Alan Peat Imorters and exporters face their biggest transport crisis since the Second World War. The labour strike at Transnet, now in its second week, is starting to take its toll and with no end in sight the cost to the economy is estimated to be billions. The unions, the SA Transport Allied Workers Union (Satawu) and the United Transport and Allied Trade Union (Utatu), said in a joint
statement on Monday that the strike “is set to intensify, with no resolution in sight”. And, although no-one will venture to place an exact amount on it, all are agreed that the SA economy is now facing a multi-billion loss. The strike doesn’t directly affect airfreight or courier/ express movement of goods, but it does directly impact on the shipping lines and seafreight sectors, and some 80% in value (but even more To page 12
The ongoing Transnet strike has brought many of the ports in the country, like Ncqura, Durban and Cape Town, to a near standstill as unions and management battle over a wage dispute.
Truckers out of work, ships idle in Cape Town By Ray Smuts
“The situation is frightening. Truckers are Hundreds of Western Cape standing around not making hauliers are out of work as a any money, ships lie idle and result of the Transnet worker the Cape Town container strike, a “total disaster” and combi-terminals remain for the Mother City, says closed, which renders it Cape Town Harbour Carriers impossible for us to collect Association chairman, or deliver containers,” says JohnFTW Berry.quarter page 2/3/10 6:24 Berry, life as a 00515 PM who Pagestarted 2
trucker in the 1970s. Harbour Carriers Association founder member, Peter Newton, was incensed at trying to exit the port through the Heerengracht gate at 5.40 a.m. on Thursday, to find it closed. He only learnt on returning to office that an NPA official C
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had advised of the closure by e-mail after close of business the previous evening. Newton, in a letter of complaint to Barbara Hogan, minister of public enterprise; Jeremy Cronin, deputy minister of transport, and other senior officials, urged the gate be reopened without CM
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further delay, saying: “Such arbitrary, thoughtless, action is nothing short of plain, downright, stupid, not to mention dangerous.” Berry says NPA and TPT management tried their level best to assist truckers, regrettably without much luck.