The Federation of Asia Pacifi c Aircargo Associations (FAPAA) has warned its members that the US and EC security programmes are not harmonised and will be forced independently upon their global trading partners, including Asia, if individual FAPAA associations did not work with their respective governments to avoid suchconsequences.
Speaking at the 34th Executive Council Meeting in Hong Kong last month, FAPAA out-going chairman Peter McNamara said the air cargo industry will face a very diffi cult situation in the next two years. This is because the US government and the European Community will start implementing increased security measures, which are likely to affect global air cargo fl ows.“It is the most dominant issue facingour industry since 9/11,” he said,adding that if Asian countries didnot work hard with governments andairline partners to harmonise securitysystems in their respective countries,the US and the EC would tell themwhat to do.
He pointed out that while the US had approved the legislation for implementation of 100 per cent screening of all cargo, one of the problems was that there was no defi nition of “screening”, giving rise to concerns of how it will be implemented on the non-shippersprogramme.
In Europe, under the non-shippers programme, the operator or freight forwarder, when submitting cargo into the logistics chain, has to ensure that it traveled through a secure environment until the fi nal destination. This is already a substantial security approach,he added.
“Other sorts of problems we are seeing in some Asian countries are that some of the rules applied to cargo are not as tightly policed as in other places and then you start to question the integrity of the non-shippers programme,” he said. Earlier, a survey among the FAPAA member countries revealed that existing security requirements differed from country to country.
McNamara highlighted that as twothirds of global air freight originated somewhere in Asia, FAPAA members had the opportunity, over a one-year to 18 month period, to work with their governments to harmonise the air freight handling system in their own areas. He said over the next three months, FAPAA members would work to come up with a preferred model of how they would like their governments to follow, which would likely be rejected by some of them.
Walther Nahr, who is the vice-chairman of FAPAA (2007-2008) and External Affairs Sub-Committee Chairman, explained that if the present system in Hong Kong facilitated handling of three pallets per minute, and the screening took 10 minutes per pallet, it would cause a bottleneck in the system.
Addressing the security session of the meeting, Albert Lo, manager of cargo services for Cathay Pacifi c Cargo warned that 100 per cent screening of air cargo, which in August was signed into law by US president George W. Bush, would “increase costs, slow down the effi ciency and destroy the entire air freight industry.”
The measures to secure air cargo should be consistent and mutually recognised and will have to move upstream to avoid bottlenecks at the airport, said Lo.
-Wong Joon San
