Don’t drop the ball on port

The Dar es Salaam port is on the news again for, as is almost always the case, inefficiency. Last week news broke that cargo clearance time has gone up from three to 10 days due to absence of conveyor belts. The upgrade of berths one and two has improved the capacity of the port making the old system of using hoopers obsolete. But this key revelation was made public only when a Parliament committee visited the port.

And the minister responsible for ports took the opportunity to ask the MPs to allocate funds for the purchase of conveyor belts. Following the public disclosures of the port’s inefficiency, Mr Isack Kamwelwe, the minister for Infrastructure issued directives to government agencies to “operate from under the same roof.” The minister went ahead to say he would convene a meeting next month to hear port stakeholders’ complaints over the inefficiency of the port. We commend Mr Kamwelwe for his prompt actions, but we also advise the government not to drop the ball on the Dar es Salaam port. For it appears as if the operations of the port, the most important entry and exit point for goods into and from Tanzania and the southern and central African hinterland, are easily forgotten till something goes wrong and made public.

Why, pray, are government agencies in charge of goods clearance at the port not yet operating from under one roof, since that was the justification for spending hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ money to construct what is now Dar es Salaam’s second tallest building, the TPA Tower?