Namibia to host the Tripartite TRIPS and CMTS systems

Today (28 February 2023) a celebration was held in Namibia for the official launch of the Transport Register and Information Platform System (TRIPS) and the Corridor Trip Monitoring System (CMTS). Namibia will host the ICT infrastructure and the servers of the two systems, which are currently piloted in four Tripartite member States: Namibia, Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe, to be soon joined by Malawi and Mozambique where they are currently being installed.

The TRIPS is an IT system for the registration of cross-border transport operators using the Tripartite corridors on the basis of their capability to meet specific standards and quality regulation criteria specified in the Multilateral Cross Border Road Transport Agreement (MCBRTA). This Agreement, currently not yet approved by the Tripartite Council of Ministers, aims at abolishing the bilateral permits and the current regulatory measures that currently restrict, limit or control the supply of transport of passengers and goods in cross-border road transport in the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the East African Community (EAC) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). In addition, the MCBRTA aims at harmonizing procedures for enforcement of transgressions committed by drivers involved in cross-border operations, through a standardized system of penalties and demerit points under which a person’s driving license will be cancelled or suspended based on the number of points accumulated by them over a period of time because of traffic offences or infringements committed in that period. An integrated Transgression System will also be established to record offences and violations by transport operators and drivers and to administer the standardized penalties and demerit points system as described in the MCBRTA. The final objective of the MCBRTA is to overcome the fragmentation of the cross-border regulation in the Eastern and Southern Africa (EA-SA) by unifying requirements for cross-border transportation through the registration of truckers into a single IT-based registration system to which all the national transport operators systems will be interfaced.

The CTMS, on the other hand, is a project for the electronic monitoring and surveillance of cargo and truckers’ movements developed by the Tripartite policy organs with the financial support of the EU to facilitate safe cross border movement of goods and persons along the main corridors in the Tripartite region.