Phil Goff’s strong letter demands responses from Ports of Auckland

By Nita Blake-Persen of RNZ

The Mayor of Auckland has written to Ports of Auckland to formally express his concerns about its performance.

The latest quarterly port report for October-December 2020 reveals that there have been four injuries from stopping work, and that is in addition to the three port-related deaths in recent years].

In a letter sent by Phil Goff to Ports president Bill Osborne last week, he alleges that the company “shows no willingness to be held accountable for its performance.”

The letter sets out concerns around health and safety, responsiveness, responsibility, and performance.

Goff expresses specific concerns about a delay in the publication of an independent report]that was commissioned by the council and carried out by CHASNZ, on the security in the ports of Auckland Limited (POAL).

“The time taken by POAL to provide comments on the CHASNZ revision draft is unreasonably delaying the completion of the report.

“More importantly, it is delaying POAL from taking positive action to address the report’s findings.”

Goff said the current performance was not acceptable.

“As a result of the issues described in this letter, I have a very low level of confidence that the POALs are on track to improve this performance.”

Osborne responded to the letter the next day, addressing concerns. He said that while ports would try to improve their communication, they were giving their full attention and focus to the safety report.

“Management has informed me that they support the report’s recommendations, some of which have already been implemented and others are still being worked on.

“I have been informed that many of the recommendations in the draft CHASNZ report are in line with actions already being taken across the company.”

He said the report should be finalized and available to the board in the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, a scheduled public appearance by the ports in front of Auckland councilors will now be held in private to ensure an “unrestricted” discussion.

Councilmember Chris Darby said Ports leadership had been reluctant to share information in a public setting, but councilors wanted to remove any excuses for a lack of transparency.

There will be a lot to discuss outside of the public eye: the most recent reports show that there were four lost-time injuries for the second quarter, against an annual goal of zero.]

Additionally, the crane rate (the number of container cranes taking off from a ship in one hour) was 24.61 for the quarter, against an annual target of 32.00.

The shipping rate (the number of containers entering and leaving a container ship in one hour) was 37.5 for the quarter against an annual target of 75.0.

However, the average time spent by vehicles in the multiple cargo terminal for the quarter managed to exceed the annual target of 2.85 days with a result of 2.0 days.

Darby said there was a lot of work to be done with the Ports, with two vacancies on the board after several departures last year, including board president Liz Young.

He said he was surprised Young was leaving in the midst of several crises to the Ports, but was confident that the roles would be filled by people eager for a leadership challenge.

– RNZ