South Africa’s logistics utility has been hard at work to polish its tarnished image, regularly sending out information that for all intents and purposes contain a modicum of credibility.
These releases about Transnet’s means and milestones are very useful of course, especially if you’re an online news site representing the freight industry, eager for official information to use on a daily basis.
Question is, can Transnet’s media mill be trusted?
Unfortunately, a pattern has emerged that has blatant spin-doctoring written all over it.
Whether it’s about having the means to adequately implement a truck-staging area at the Port of Cape Town – supposedly – or about the shipment of milestone commodity volumes, Transnet’s trumpeting of achievements and ability is beginning to sound like something you sing at wedding receptions.
Yesterday’s report, for example, about the “highest coal and manganese volumes ever” *, is a case in point.
This morning, and not for the time first time, the South African Association of Freight Forwarders (Saaff) endeavoured to try and set the record straight.
One of its executives, whose name we’ve decided to withhold, said: “I’m afraid Transnet Port Terminals (TPT) have caught you again. There is no way that we have exported a record volume of coal.
“The terminal is only operating at 60% of its capacity.”
The rest of the volumes had to be taken up by road freight operators because of the inability of Transnet Freight Rail to deliver coal to the harbour, he said.
Editorially deciding between fact and falsehood, opinion and obfuscation, or being economical with the truth rather, is of course not the easiest thing when the clock is ticking against looming deadlines.
Save to say, though, that there’s an element of trust to consider here, on both sides of the spectrum, both public and private.
Having said that, one only has to consider the back-up of tipper trucks on the N2 towards Richards Bay and the traffic chaos it has caused, to figure out that there’s a serious capacity crunch Transnet appears incapable of dealing with.
Quite frankly, it’s embarrassing to think that as a news source we let our guard down, allowing such information to go through unchecked. Let’s just say that it has come as a wake-up call for editorial processes.
Ultimately the Saaff executive succinctly answered our question: “Transnet cannot be trusted!”
*Read this for context: (https://tinyurl.com/5x2m2rfw).
