Operations resume at Port of Durban following floods

Operations have resumed at the Port of Durban after they were temporarily suspended earlier this week due to the floods that have claimed the lives of 395 people in the province.

Managing Director at Transnet National Ports Authority, Moshe Motlohi, says currently about 20% of trucks are delivering fuel.

He says the trucks delivering essential cargo including medicines and food are also being allowed to travel between Bayhead container terminal and the Port of Durban.

“We were mindful that there were commodities that are urgent that must be kept on the market; here, we are referring to petroleum products. We then arranged with the City of eThekwini that we should be allowed to use the Bliff Road to access Island View where we allowed the trucks that are coming to fetch diesel and fuel and jet fuel. We also have made a special dispensation for medical supplies that will be required there’s a process that we’ve communicated to industry where they will approach various terminals to get those trucks to be given access to use the same road to the port,” says Motlohi.

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Motlohi says Bayhead Road remains closed after a portion of about 30 meters of the road that links the container precinct and Island View was washed away.

“We have identified a service road that we are going to commission within the next few weeks, which will come as a bypass to the area that’s been washed away. That will then give us a decent flow of trucks into Bayhead container terminal and Island View that will then carry the 1300 trucks that are coming. We’ll start easing off the embargo in Bayhead Road as soon as we’re done with the current fix that we have,” says Motlohi.

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