DURBAN - THE South African Association of Freight Forwarders (Saaff) and the Minerals Council of South Africa (Minerals Council) have raised concerns about the severe congestion at the Lebombo/ Ressano Garcia border post on the Maputo Corridor between South Africa and Mozambique.
The Saaff and the Minerals Council said that congestion at the Maputo Corridor has cost trucking companies R1.3bn in lost revenue so far this year.
“The greatest challenge to the border crossing is the lack of 24-hour operations, resulting in crossing times increasing from an average of one hour to more than 20 hours since 2019. Covid-19 restrictions exacerbate the situation and vaccination certificates expire while they wait in the queues.
Transporters confirm that border crossing times are the worst they have experienced in 15 years.”
They added that the queue of trucks between Komatipoort and Lebombo is frequently between 7km and 15km long.
“Transport companies carrying cargo in transit from South Africa to Maputo harbour estimate the border delays have resulted in more than R1.3bn of lost revenue for the year to date. Both the mining and transport sectors are losing confidence in the ability of the public sector to support trade on this strategic corridor.”
The Saaff and the Minerals Council said that urgent steps needed to be taken at the Maputo Corridor including “urgent, intentional, focused and conciliatory bilateral engagements at the highest level of government to address the failure to address underlying tensions”.
“The latent antagonism between South Africa and Mozambique at an operational level constitutes a significant barrier to trade and, ultimately, leads to additional costly delays, a deterioration of services to the users on both sides of the border post, and an overall inability to align with regional integration imperatives.”
Gavin Kelly, CEO of the Road Freight Association, said one of the problems at the Lebombo border post was that the border crossing does not operate 24 hours a day.
“The border crossing closes at 5pm and when it reopens at 8am there is a huge backlog of traffic.
“The other issue is Covid-19, which has had a huge impact. There are a diminished number of officers working and the border crossing does close now and again due to Covid 19 infections.”
DA MP Angel Khanyile said that the lives of truck drivers are at risk.
“Trucks have been forced to wait in lines as long as 15km for more than three days while struggling to cross the border. Not only has this reportedly cost the economy an estimated R30.5bn in undelivered coal, iron ore and chrome ore alone, it has also put the lives of the truck drivers at risk.” Khanyile added that the freight industry is the lifeblood of African economies.
“The truck drivers also don’t have access to the necessary food, water and sanitation facilities. This trend is developing at all our border posts.”
Barbara Mommen, a Maputo Corridor representative from Saaff, said that delays profoundly compromise the ability of the route to function efficiently and competitively.
“The worst case scenario is that trucking companies and mining companies will go out of business because they can’t get their export commodities out on time. So this congestion has been going on since August this year and even before and some of the smaller operators have had to close their doors.”
Mommen added that truck drivers having to wait three days in long queues is a humanitarian crisis.
“The deterioration of trucks’ border crossing times had been considerable in 2018 and 2019 the border crossing times were in the region of 35 minutes to one hour, while this week and last week, trucks have been waiting in excess of 16 hours just to cross the border.”
The Department of Home Affairs and Department of Transport could not be reached for comment at the time of publication.
THE MERCURY