Handling Charges 'A Subsidy’

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31128, 3 August 1966, Page 1

Handling Charges 'A Subsidy’

(N.Z. Press Association)

WELLINGTON, August 2.

The Auckland Chamber of Commerce strongly opposed the linking of wharfhandling charges with the freight rate, the Transport Commission was told in Wellington today.

An executive member of the chamber, Mr T. R. Sussex, said the new wharfhandling charges, which took effect from January 1 this year for vessels of the New Zea-land-European Shipping Association, did not correct all anomalies at all ports. “In fact, they create new anomalies, are unsound and

unfair in their Incidence, and bear particularly harshly on highly-mechanised ports,” Mr Sussex said. “The new system established a procedure whereby consignees and shippers have become responsible for charges for services over which they have no control, and which are principally for the benefit of the ship.” Mr Sussex was giving evidence at the second day of the inquiry, in wharf-handling charges, which had been prompted by a request by the chamber to the Prime Minister.

The Minister of Transport had sought a report from the commission on the principles and structure of wharfhandling charges. The commission (Judge K. G. Archer, chairman, and Messrs W. R. Day and J. T. f.ilkison) has been asked to

recommend any variation that it thought were warranted. Mr Sussex said that as long as a common freight rate was in force, wharf-handling charges could not be divorced from other port-operating costs.

He said the chamber would show that wharf-handling charges in Auckland had a direct connexion* with total port-operating charges and the common freight, and that under the scheme introduced by the association, Auckland was subsiding the common freight rate. Mr Sussex cited six items in wharf handling which, he said, should be paid by the ship. These were overtime and additional costs caused by working overtime, two men in any wharf gang, mechanical plant and equipment, stand-by and delays caused by the ship, dirt mongy and special pay-

ments over award rates, and bonus payments. Counsel for the chamber, Mr M. F. Chilwell, Q.C., said the new charges had been “bulldozed” through, in spite of strong opposition from the chamber and the Auckland Port operations committee.

Mr Chilwell said it was vital in the interest of ports not to allow the system of apportioning costs to be used as a method of subsidising the less efficient ports at the expense of the efficient The port of Auckland had the highest degree of mechanisation in the country and first-class facilities.

If the rate of loading and discharging there was applied throughout New Zealand, the same gross tonnage would be moved with three less ships

a year, Mr Chilwell said. The inquiry is expected to continue till Friday.