Southern African ports need to better position themselves to meet the levels of quality and timelines demanded by their clients.According to Andrew Kanime, CEO of Namport, to achieve this, employees must be appropriately trained and have the correct work ethos and the right attitudes.“Customer service should be the cornerstone of the port business,” he said, indicating that Namport had embarked on a programme of organisational culture transformation to bring about change from within the port authority.It was launched in July last year and the goal was not only to deliver a positive culture amongst employees, but also to upskill them, ultimately delivering better service to port users.“It is common cause that port users are increasingly demanding quick turnaround times in ports and reduced port costs. This can only be achieved if we live by the value that superior client service is the foundation of our operations,” he said. “The higher the efficacy with which we handle cargo through the ports, the faster the turnaround times and the cheaper the costs.”He said Namport, in particular, was aware of the current challenges it faced in this regard and understood the need to upskill, realign its culture, and invest in additional and new cargo handling equipment to bring about the much-needed change.According to Kanime, Namport has focused heavily on the construction of the New Container terminal. While this watershed project was good news for Namibia, it had created a gap in investment in cargo handling equipment, especially yard equipment, he said.“The very depressed economic environment and constrained financial resources have thus not allowed us to roll out these acquisitions at the pace we would have wanted to. In the meantime, we have been burdened with equipment breakdowns and shortages.”He said while there were still significant and onerous competing financial demands on the business, Namport had taken a conscious decision to replace its cargo handling equipment – a process that will take place gradually over the next few years, starting with those areas where the requirements are most critical.“We presently have, amongst others, the purchase of new reach stackers, rubber tyre gantry cranes, forklifts, wharf cranes, spreaders, docking blocks and cradle wheels for the Syncrolift at various stages of procurement.”Kanime said another area of focus was automation. “We are currently rolling out digitisation as part of our focus towards enriching the customer’s experience and streamlining processes and operating costs.”
