Why ship waiting time has gone up from 3 to 10 days

Dar es Salaam. Tanzania Ports Authority (TPA) has raised concerns over docking ships taking longer than necessary unloading cargo at the Dar es Salaam port due to absence of conveyor belts.

The port currently uses hoopers system that takes between 10 to 12 days, up from an average of three days a few months ago.

TPA director general Deusdedit Kakonko revealed this yesterday when briefing the Parliamentary Budget Committee that visited the port to inspect progress of the upgrading of berths.

TPA has been renovating its ports since last year. Work of upgrading berths is going on at Dar es Salaam, Tanga and Mtwara ports.

In view of this, Mr Kakonko told the Committee that following the upgrading of berths one and two, large ships can now dock at the port but the remaining challenge is the delays in cargo unloading.

“Because we have upgraded berth one and two, large ships have started docking at the port but because we are using the hoopers system, it takes longer to unload the cargo, that’s why we now need to upgrade to using conveyor belts,” said Mr Kakonko.

Speaking during the tour, Works, Transport and Communications Minister Isack Kamwelwe told members of the Parliamentary Budget Committee that the government would allocate funds for the installation of the conveyor belts at the port.

When, asked about the cost of installing conveyor belts, the minister said: “It is too early to announce that because the prices will be determined when tenders are floated and bidding starts.”

In 2015 the World Bank, in cooperation with the United Kingdoma Department for International Development (DFID) and TradeMark East Africa (TMEA) injected a total of $596 million (about Sh1.15 trillion) in the project of deepening and strengthening of berths 1-7, the dredging of the entrance channel and turning basin in the port.

Out of the money, the World Bank, gave Tanzania a $400 million in loans to finance port upgrading project in line with the Dar es Salaam Maritime Gateway Project (DMGP).

In another development, he said they have been able to upgrade berths 1 and 2 and others are being finalized and so far they have put up three ships at Lake Nyasa and Lake Tanganyika to facilitate trade.

Parliamentary Budget Committee chairman Adadi Rajabu said they toured the port to inspect the progress of the upgrading project at the ports.

According to him, they were satisfied with the way the works was progressing and urged the authority to finish the work in time so that the government could start garnering more revenues from the facility.