Kick Inefficiency Out Of Priok
The dwelling time issue has not even finished yet but Tanjung Priok Port is now experiencing another fundamental problem that sparked high economic cost and severe inefficiency.
The main problem this time is a severe congestion in distribution line. As the result, freight operators from and to major ports in Indonesia suffered financial loss at least IDR9 billion per day.
The congestion that has occurred since Saturday (7/13) is causing a 50% drop in trip or schedule of goods and containers transport. At the same time, the flow of goods in Tanjung Priok Port can be said to be in a state of high season, which is characterized by a surge in the volume of exported and imported goods as well as goods from between islands.
This Daily reported that severe congestion is not only happening outside or road access, but it also spreads into the port. In a short time, trucks carrying goods and containers are having difficulty to enter and exit from the port.
Terminal 3 Conventional Pier is the most highlighted congestion point by port transport companies because each truck that enters to the port should be weighed first. To make matters worse, the number of weighing equipments for exported and imported goods is far from sufficient.
PT Pelindo II as the operator of Tanjung Priok Port has taken the necessary measures to address the issue. For example, the truck weighing activity is conducted manually using special transport equipment to reduce congestion.
However, the state-owned company doesn’t want to be regarded as incompetent port operator. Pelindo II said the congestion in Tanjung Priok occurs due to poor road infrastructure outside the port.
The congestion has not been resolved since last weekend until Wednesday (7/17) and now vessels are facing congestion to berth in the port area and unload their cargo. This inefficiency happened because container yard at the side of the dock is already full, leading to a surge in logistic cost that must be borne by the users of service.
Disaster which keeps striking Tanjung Priok Port showed that the chronic problems facing by this port, so it needs to be fundamentally solved.
Bad report on Tanjung Priok has also tarnished Indonesia in the global business, since supporting facilities in business sector in Indonesia is still far from expectations.
This issue requires all parties to unify the vision and mission to make major ports in the country in order to compete at the regional level, at least in the Asean Region with a target completion of dwelling time at 3 days.
This is not an easy task because we are at the same time had to face a two front war: First, improvement and management of Tanjung Priok. Second is redevelopment where the management of the port should be start over from zero in accordance with the new system and rules.
Therefore, the challenges that must be answered is how to make the port service at Tanjung Priok to be primed on all sides, both from the aspect of logistics, inspection of goods, customs, trucking up, container yards.
Singapore, for example, has met all above criteria long time ago. Port authority in the neighboring country was no longer bothered by the ‘little things’ that make serious headache.
No wonder the service port in the neighboring country has always been a benchmark for port operators in developing countries which have such problem in their ports, including Indonesia.
In the context, the audit of the overall performance and port services, particularly the Tanjung Priok, which is performed by the State Audit Board will be significant in order to unveil the mystery behind the ‘storm’ in Tanjung Priok.
While waiting for the audit results, it should be underlined that the long dwelling time as one an indicator of the efficiency in the port and it cannot be left as a classic problem without any real solution.
Precisely improvement efforts across departments and institution including business associations are a decisive turning point that we can manage Tanjung Priok port based on the global standard for export import activities
Source: http://en.bisnis.com/
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