Agents call for Dar port improvement

News was prepared under the information support of Online Daily Newspaper on Hellenic and international Shipping "Hellenic Shipping News".

31 Oct 2007

Shipping agents have written to the Ministry of Infrastructure Development, seeking a quick solution to container clogging at the Dar es Salaam port. They allege that not much had changed despite a directive from the Prime Minister Edward Lowassa some two months ago to ensure a 24-hour clearance service. The Tanzania Shipping Agents Association (TASAA) chairman Mr Emmanuel Mallya said in his letter to the Permanent Secretary dated October 19 this year, that regardless of the 24-hour work, the work was moving at a low pace. The TASAA chairman said the condition has forced many shippers to divert Dar es Salaam cargo to other ports, insisting that proper computations had showed that the government was losing millions of dollars. The shipping agents, he said, cannot accept the current situation as it is resulting into financial losses to ship owners and importers/exporters. ''Immediate action should be taken by the Customs and Sumatra to operationalise the inland container depots (ICDS) outside the ports to cater for container overflows'' He added.  The port is recording a dropping trend only five months after the Tanzania Ports Authority TPA) Director General Ephraim Mgawe promised that the operational area would soon be more than doubled and better equipped under a multi-billion shillings short-term expansion programme, to cope with increased cargo in April this year. Mr Mgawe promised that TPA is geared towards increasing port's operational area because transit dry cargo and containers destined to neighbouring countries have increased from about 800,000 to over 1.1 million tonnes, and from 19,000 to 61,000 twenty equivalent units (TEUs) in the last five years. The Minister for Infrastructure development Mr Andrew Chenge could not be reached to comment as he was attending a meeting.