Regulations relating to the road transport of hazardous goods.
How do these requirements affect the clearing and forwarding agents when dangerous goods are imported in to South Africa?

There is a gray area regarding who is responsible for producing the required forms, namely the TREM Card and the declaration form, when transporting goods by road from the harbour to the consignee’s destination.

The INCO terms of the contract will determine who owns the goods from harbour to the point of destination in South Africa, in other word who is the consignor and who is the consignee. Should the contract be C&F or C.I.F. then the overseas supplier is responsible as they are the consignor up to the point of destination. However the overseas supplier may not be familiar with the format of the declaration form for South Africa.
Should the INCO terms of the contract be for example F.O.B. then the importer will be the consignor from the harbour to the point of destination and they would then be responsible.

We take the view that the importer should supply the clearing agent with the declaration form and the TREM card to avoid any delays.

To quote from SANS 10231 Ed. 2.3 sec 5.1.4
Relevant parties such as marketing agents, sales agents or transport brokers would be regarded as assuming the role of their principals for the provision of all the necessary information to the consignor.
Therefore freight forwarders dealing with the international transport of dangerous goods need to be especially aware of their obligations.
Everybody is responsible
Where the carrier is not carrying their own goods, it can be expected that the consignor and consignee are more familiar with the particular hazards of the products being transported. Consequently they are held responsible for the compliance as well as the operator and his driver. The operator, consignor and consignee, as the case may be, must nominate a “qualified person” to handle the task concerning the transportation of the dangerous goods (Reg. 277)

Liability is assumed from Cradle to Grave

The clearing and forwarding agents, acting on behalf of their client (the importer or exporter), can arrange for the transport of the cargo to their client. In doing so they have to present the required documents to the transport company and ensure that the transport company is qualified in terms of the act to carry the cargo in the required manner.

There is a common misunderstanding among clearing and forwarding agents that the only documents required are a MSDS (material safety data sheet) and a TREM card. This is in fact incorrect.

The documents that are required by the road transport authorities to be handed over are the Transport Emergency Card TREMCARD) and the Hazardous Goods Declaration Form. The declaration forms that are supplied by the overseas supplier are very often not in the required format according to the regulations. Therefore delays could ensure in getting the documents in the correct format and heavy fines could be encountered and obviously we would all prefer to avoid these situations.

HazDocs addresses these issues in the software application.