Transport industry urged to embrace RTMS

"I urge all industry stakeholders to embrace this visionary system which will not only improve efficiencies in the South African logistics value chain, but also enable best practice sharing within the Southern African Development Community," said Chikunga.

"The department sees the implementation of the RTMS strategy as a responsibility that needs to be driven by industry, while the department will continue to participate and support the National RTMS Committee and its various sub-committees. I therefore commend the pro-activity shown by the leadership of this series of workshops and have no doubt that it will lead to a tremendous improvement in the performance of the logistics value chain."

Compliance to a set of standards

A five-year RTMS strategy was announced by the Minister of Transport in October 2006 after lengthy deliberations with many involved parties. The SA Bureau of Standards was tasked with setting out the requisite standards. Now the task is to get many more companies in the transport industry to obtain RTMS accreditation.

The RTMS is an industry-led, government-supported voluntary self regulation scheme which uses compliance to a set of standards as its method of operation. These standards include adhering to road traffic regulations, contributing to the preservation of the road infrastructure and promoting road safety, with one of the positive outflows for the accredited operators being increased productivity.

Implementation of new Act

Chikunga told the delegates there are plans to implement the National Road Traffic Amendment Act, after which the consignee and consignors of goods transported by road will be also be held liable for overloading and other traffic offences related to the related freight transport operations. "The implementation of the self-regulatory RTMS standards will, therefore, assist the accredited companies to comply with the Road Traffic Act and make our roads safer," she said.

"I must stress that government, the RTMS and the road freight industry have to work together to understand the pressure being exerted on our road network and how the deterioration of the network can lead to increased congestion, destruction of the road network itself and subsequently these factors will derail the development of the very effective transportation system that we desperately need for social and economic development," Chikunga concluded.