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FREIGHT & TRADING WEEKLY
FRIDAY 30 October 2009 NO. 1886
The Freight Community’s Weekly Newspaper for Import / Export decision makers – on subscription
Hauliers want clarity on DoT proposal By Alan Peat
warehousemen, forwarders, shippers, other national road transport associations – everyone.” And this lengthy and detailed list of complaints and its possible impacts on the industry was also presented to the SA press last week at a media briefing by senior RFA management. But the one blank spot, Naidoo told FTW last week, was in organising a meeting with an appropriately senior face at the department of transport (DoT). “We’ve been trying to get a meeting with the DoT for over
In the battle against the proposal to reduce the permissible axle mass for freight vehicles, the Road Freight Association (RFA) has come out with all its guns blazing. “We have circulated all our complaints to all the stakeholders in the freight industry,” said CEO Sharmini Naidoo. “Truckers, Sharmini Naidoo ... The RFA is not going to just accept the DoT proposal and is attending to the matter urgently.
a week, but to no avail,” she added. It’s all been a bit of a poor reaction from the department, with the RFA still not even in the know about who devised this scheme – which basically states that it wants to reduce single rear axle mass load from 9 000-kilograms to 8 000-kgs to save damage to the already deteriorated secondary road system, according to the DoT. The RFA was able to identify the author of the covering letter of intent correspondence, but he turned To page 12
Container congestion in Cape Town By Ray Smuts Containerships were lined up, much like taxis at an airport, as vicious southeasterly winds sandblasted Cape Town for four days last week, resulting in nearly 44
hours of work stoppages and overall berthing delays of well over 100 hours in some instances. If that’s not bad enough, the Mother City terminal had been hit by the self-same ‘Cape Doctor’ the previous
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week, accounting for total disruption of roughly 90 hours over two weeks. The knock-on effects are evident, compounded by the terminal operating at 25% below capacity, due to construction at Berth 602, C
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and teething problems with a new container handling system. When the wind finally blew itself out on Thursday (October 22), ship watchers were greeted by the unusual sight of eight containerships CM
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(and a single bulk carrier) at anchor in Table Bay. Working the backlog away will not be easy, as Transnet Port Terminals’ planning manager, Mike Powles, concedes. To page 12