By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has made a commitment to resolve the rail network crisis, and get trucks off the road to allow to allow the Richard’s Bay port to operate optimally.
The president said the problems have been building up over the years, including the lack of maintenance of locomotives and old equipment, which affected the operations at Richards Bay.
Ramaphosa has concluded an oversight visit – alongside Minister of Public Enterprises Pravin Gordhan at the Richards Bay ports terminal on KwaZulu-Natal’s north coast.
The visit comes after Transnet’s decision to suspend the receiving of goods via road transport into its Richards Bay Mineral Port Terminal.
Ramaphosa said they have done the diagnostic analysis, and Transnet will implement the roadmap that will get it out of the quagmire.
Gordhan said recently that volumes of goods transported by rail had decreased from 226 million tons to 149 million tons in the last five years.
This has had an impact on the balance sheet of Transnet.
Ramaphosa, who was visiting the Richards Bay port on Thursday, said plans were afoot to fix the port and reduce inefficiencies that have caused huge delays in the export of goods.
Ships are stuck at sea for days before they can offload cargo. Trucks are stuck on the road outside the port for days before they can be processed.
Ramaphosa said they have looked at all the inefficiencies, and Gordhan and Transnet executives were on top of these issues.
Transnet has a lot of challenges. Challenges that emanate from the past. In a number of instances, ancient machinery or equipment; machinery that has not been maintained. But what I was really pleased about is that they have a plan called a roadmap. A roadmap that is going to help resolve many of the problems and challenges that Transnet is going through.
“Minister Gordhan has been working through all these matters with them, the acting CEO, and various executives. I do believe that in a while we are going to be getting rid of the backlog on the road. The trucks, as long as they are still on the roads, will be coming in. But in the end, we want the trucks off the roads. We want the products to be exported by rail, and we are working towards that plan.
“The plans that we have got for this precinct are of high quality. There is going to be a lot of investments, up to R160 billion. But the other important aspect, of course, is that Transnet has now embraced and accepted working together with the private sector,” said Ramaphosa.
He said they have roped in the private sector to assist in the operations of the port.
The private sector will play a role either through concessions or cooperation, said Ramaphosa.
Transnet will run various operations at the port with the private sector.
Gordhan said consequence management is being implemented in dealing with failures at port terminals under the management of logistics and transport parastatal Transnet
He said vacant positions are being filled at the parastatal to help deal with the challenges.
“The consequence management, the board has already expressed its views and some have departed. Secondly, the processes for filling those positions are on the way- and early in the new year, as far as Transnet is concerned, we will have those gaps filled in.”