PRESS STATEMENT 
 We wish to bring to the kind attention of our esteemed customers in Kenya and transit region that cargo handling operations at the Port of Mombasa have been adversely affected by torrential rains that have continued pounding the coast region in the last ten days.
 The more than expected rains have disrupted port operations especially for products that are brought in bulk like sugar, wheat, maize, rice etc.  On the other hand the flow of road traffic of which the port relies up to 95% for the receipt and delivery has and continues to face challenges largely on account of destructions visited on the road structures by the heavy rains. Similarly there are also numerous and persistent power outages that seem to match the down pours.
 KPA successfully reduced the number of ships waiting from an old time high of 22 ships towards end of August 2011 to 3 only last week. The continued heavy rains have however affected both infrastructure and port operations. Consequently, discharge and off-take of cargo at both the Conventional and the container terminal areas have slowed down causing the increase in the number of ships waiting to berth.
 As of Monday 17th October 2011, there were 20 vessels (9 container ships and 11 general cargo ships) waiting to berth. The waiting container vessels are scheduled to offload 4,591 TEUs (Twenty Foot Equivalent Units) while the general cargo ships will discharge a total of 68,703 tons which include   6,000 tons and 14,999 tons of bagged sugar and sorghum respectively.
 The most affected areas are those handling grain, sugar, fertilizers, clinker, steel and coal. The poor state of the road and traffic congestion between Miritini and Changamwe round about especially in this rainy season has further aggravated the situation. With trucks taking as long as six hours to reach the port, truck turnaround time has been heavily hampered. Hence, cargo off-take from the port is at dismal pace, with total delivery over the weekend standing at 1,271 TEUs compared to over 3000 TEUs in normal times. The current container population in the port is 13,361 TEUs up from 12,993 TEUs last week. Over 2500 TEUs containers are documented and awaiting collection.
Frequent power outages have equally affected documentation and equipment performance, with an average down time of 6 hours experienced in every 24 hours.
 We are expecting at least 13 ships to complete operations and sail in the next three days if the weather permits. This will enable us to berth the waiting ships and to reduce the number of ships waiting.
 Meanwhile all the new ship to shore cranes are fully operational while demolition of shed No.4/5 is complete. We have deferred some of the rehabilitation works at the quay and yards with a view to ensuring that we deliver more on both ship and cargo operations. We would like to reassure our customers of our continued commitment to giving an acceptable level of service and that we are working on modalities to boost performance and recover for lost time once the rains subside.

Gichiri Ndua
Managing Director
Kenya Ports Authority
17th October 2011