Here’s a surprise – Homeland Security won’t be able to screen 100 percent of imported containers by 2012.
So the US Department of Homeland Security have finally wised up. It took them long enough, but eventually they have arrived at the conclusion that it will not be possible to meet their deadline for the screening of all import containers.
The magic was supposed to happen in 2012 when every ocean container travelling across sea to shining sea and being imported into the US, a huge portion from China, would enter the country having been screened at some point along the journey.
This, it now turns out, is impossible. I know, the global transport and logistics industry has been telling Homeland Security this for the last couple of years, but being a large bureaucracy composed of smaller bureaucracies with an umbrella over other bureaucracies, the message took a while to worm its way to the top.
But wriggle through it did, and Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano announced that her department would be unable to meet the congressionally mandated 2012 deadline for scanning all US-bound ship cargo for nuke ingredients.
In testimony made by Napolitano to the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, she called on the government to review the entire initiative.
The shipping industry and forwarders across the globe will receive this news with relief and we all look forward to the creation of a new programme on a risk assessed, commercially practical and technologically feasible basis.
The chief point here is that the screening technology is not yet available to penetrate dense cargo or large quantities of cargo in containers. Maybe we should wait until it is available before setting deadlines and contributing to a surge in hypertension among supply chain operators.
* Also in the news today, the Chinese government crackdown on corruption will continue next year and includes a morality drive and a ban on officials having mistresses. Beijing insists it has no plans to change the Chinese calendar and it is purely coincidental that next year will be The Year of the Tiger.