Freight forwarders are the 'black hole' for international trade initiatives aimed at safeguarding Asia's supply chain against acts of terrorism, according to leading security officials.
Washington-led initiatives such as the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (CT-Pat) emphasise the need for employee 'certification', an area supply chain security experts say is the forwarders' Achilles heel.
'Freight forwarders are vulnerable because they don't background anybody. In some places the forwarders in Asia are the 'black-hole' risk, because their employers don't know who they are,' said Bonni Tischler, vice-president of transportation and supply chain security for Pinkerton.
'The [trade transport] industry is waking up to the need for security, but every one keeps putting [human resource issues] on the backburner, and it is really important,' Ms Tischler said. 'At any time, a person can take down any and all of your security processes.'
CT-Pat is the Bush administration's bid to make United States importers, their vendors and transport providers responsible for securing areas of the supply chain in which the US Customs Service cannot effectively intervene.
As with the government-to-government negotiated Container Security Initiative, the incentive for shippers is streamlined access to the US consumer base. After US importers and transport providers were targeted in the first two phases, US Customs in August extended the risk-management programme to brokers, freight forwarders and non-vessel owning common carriers.
