*By Hebron Mwakalinga: * Everyone is complaining about Dar es Salaam port, I
think what is happening at the Port has two important causes: –
– Lack of or weak accountability system
– Limited infrastructure capacity. Everyone contends that investment in the
expansion of the Port has not kept pace with economic expansion of the
Region espacially backhaul operations (rail, warehouse, etc.). Too much
emphasis on privatisation might have affected prioritization of resources
needed to expand the Port. The Government needs to view the port and
ancillalry facilities as a precursors to appended basic transport
facilities. We have a 2012 Road Master Plan, how is it linked to the port
expansion? One study established that a number of goods including fertiliser
is expensive in Tanzania because of low offloading capacity caused by poor
storage and haulage infrastructure makes ship turn around time higher than
other ports, hence higher charges that are passed over to the consumers or
as the case of fertilisers to the Government in form on subsidy.
Let me however talk more on the first point – weak accountability system. At
one time I was forced to follow up my imported item following excessive
delays at the Port. What I discovered was simply a reflection of the
Tanzanians of the past trying to fit in todays operation where speed is
key. Unless something has happened, there used to be COMPLETELY no
management control system at the Port that could put every worker
accountable. It was been just business as usual, Jaribu Kesho, Labda Kesho,
Nani hii hayupo, etc. Go and witness how clearing and forwarding staff
congest the Long Room and Port offices. Some of the operations that could be
consolidated at one point are miles apart, no electronic connectivity among
departments albeit to provide near realtime feedback about consignee
shipment status and location. NONE. You always have to ask someone verbally
where could your file be at a particular time. Many staff percieve serving
clients more or less as a favour and not their contractual obligation.
Unless something is done, expanding the facilities alone can not help,
instead I suggest the following: –
– make detailed assessment of operations at the port
– find out how far are they from optimal/benchamarked performance of other
similar Ports****
– explain where are the constraints (sections/departments)
– what are the dufferences between well-performing ports and ours in those
departments?****
– what *kind *of people do we have at the Port (demographic, education,
experience, etc) as comapred to well performing ports – please don’t
underrate this factor!
– what management control systems are in place?****
– how effective have the systems been? ****
Most important – to what extent are Government/political
machineries leveraging Port decision making? Are these decisions impeding or
enabling operations? It is easy to acknowledge where human efforts can reach
if a person does his best, but very difficult if everyone behaves
unpredictably.****
**