This is the 13th of a series of blog postings from Clare Bottle, who will be telling us about her travels in Zambia - supported by transport charity Transaid - to see what the transport industry is like out there:
Last night I returned to Ndola from the mines covered in a mixture of insect repellent, perspiration and pit dust. It’s a shame there was temporarily no running water at the Endesha Hotel, but I brushed my teeth with bottled water I’d brought along. This morning I hopefully turned on the taps, but they were still stubbornly unresponsive. After about an hour the hotelier was persuaded to bring a large bowl of cold water and at last I was able to have a scant but refreshing wash before rushing across town to meet Kevin.
Kevin Shone and his brother Vernon (aka “Butch”), co-owners of Kasembo Transport, had been nominated by Gary as minders for Victor and me during our Copperbelt excursion. These guys know transport and they know everyone.
Drivers are trained in-house by Kasembo and if they misbehave, for example by stealing fuel, they’ll be summarily dismissed. Fuel is about the same price in Zambia as it is in the UK. Diesel costs around $1.60 per litre, yet it’s only $1 in neighbouring Zimbabwe (regional fuel prices are often discussed in US dollars; in Zimbabwe the local currency is subject to rapid inflation and purchases are actually transacted in dollars too). Drivers have previously stolen the good quality bunkered fuel from Kasembo’s own yard and concealed this by filling up their vehicles with a substitute product bought at the roadside, consisting of diesel, paraffin and other unidentifiable liquids. The destructive effect on the engine is very costly to repair.
CILT membership would only be valued by the Shone brothers if it resulted in some action. There are lots of talking-shops where the same agenda is trotted out at each meeting and nothing moves on. Value for money would come if government consultation led to genuine results. Perhaps CILT could hold the government to account on behalf of the industry.
From Kasembo, we drove over to freight forwarding agent CML to talk to Ruud Walgaard. He was busy but afforded us 20 minutes and asked us to email details about CILT as he wasn’t familiar with the organisation. Ruud talked particularly about border congestion. There are new tools for electronic payments, but Bank of Zambia takes up to eight days to get confirmation and no-one wants their shipment held up for that long at the border, so customs clearing processes remain laborious and manual.
Our final appointment was with another mine: Bwana Mkubwa (which means “Big Boss”). Andy Hickman is their Commercial Manager and deals with the outsourcing of logistics. He believes that the cost of living is artificially high for ordinary Zambians because such a high proportion of goods are imported and the supply chain is unnecessarily expensive. CILT could create public awareness to indirectly influence politicians to tackle transport problems. This is not simply a Zambian issue though, Andy described the port of Durban as a “nightmare” where containers can remain inaccessible for weeks. He said trucks can take up to a month to turn-around at Dar es Salaam.
Andy also pointed out that most trunk routes are single carriageway and there are no bypasses around towns. Passing lanes on steep inclines would be a worthwhile step, since motorists impatiently overtaking slow lorries regularly cause crashes which lead to even more cost and delay (not to mention the tragic human cost). The cost of doing business in Zambia is higher than it ought to be, because of transport inefficiency.
Gary had warned us to return before nightfall. Driving over potholes in the dark is neither fun nor safe. So Victor and I left Ndola at about mid-day and headed back to Lusaka.
If you’d like to know more and would consider sponsoring me, please visit my charity giving page: http://www.justgiving.com/clarebottle.
Clare Bottle is a freelance logistics specialist, with experience and market knowledge in storage, packaging and transport; she is also a Board Director and Trustee of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport UK.