Introduction
The growth of the concept of globalization has played an essential role in facilitating the development of more efficient transport systems, including roads, air transport, and water transport. The development of the transport networks has presented numerous benefits to the global communities, including improved convenience in traveling, faster movement of goods, as well as opening new markets, which has played a critical role in contributing to the recent growth in world economies. However, the development of the transport networks is associated with numerous problems, including smuggling of illegal drugs theft, and terrorism, activities that are extremely expensive for the transportation sector to efficiently manage. In a bid to ensure a more secure transportation network, stakeholders have instituted strict measures at diverse transport terminals; however, loopholes still exist and often incidences of smuggled illegal drugs, theft, and terrorist attacks among others are reported. The primary factor associated with the failure to ensure a completely safe transportation system is the lack of adequate resources that can ensure 100% safety in the system. Therefore, this research paper seeks to examine the issue of insecurity in the transportation sector, the challenges that the sector faces in combating the issue, as well as the recommendations that different authors have provided to manage the problems that the sector faces.
Literature Review
The transport sector intensively utilizes infrastructure. Thus, it is regarded as an essential tool in economies as well as a development tool. The transport sector has played a crucial role in the development of the global economy, where economic opportunities are mostly linked to the mobility of information, goods, and people. The transportation sector is mainly evaluated by the benefits that it presents to economies (Walkenhorst & Dihel, 2016). The benefits are categorized into the core benefits, the operational benefits, and the geographical benefits. The core benefits pertain to the physical capacities relating to the transportation of people and goods as well as the costs incurred in facilitating the mobility of goods and people. Operational benefits, on the other hand, refer to the time performance improvement, which is evaluated by reduced damages and loss, and reliability. Finally, the geographical benefits pertain to the ability to access broader markets to facilitate the improvement of economies of scale in consumption, distribution, and production.
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According to Mariotti (2015), the impacts of the transportation sector may be induced, direct, or indirect. The direct impacts are termed as the outcomes of improved efficiency and capacity in instances where transportation provides added value, employment, improved time and costs, and access to a broader market. Indirect impacts, on the other hand, refer to the outcomes of economies of scale and improved accessibility. Transport activities link the transportation sector with other critical economic sectors thus creating numerous employment and value-added effects. Finally, the induced impacts refer to the outcomes of the economic multiplier effects, which emanate from the increase in the variety of goods or services and commodities, while their prices decrease.
Multinational firms are mostly considered as the principal beneficiaries of the improvements in the transport sector in the commodity and labor markets. In the commodity markets, multinational firms benefit from increased efficiency in accessing customers and raw materials. From this perspective, transport systems are considered as crucial tools in expanding the firm’s opportunities in the acquisition and sale of diverse commodities that are crucial for manufacturing and industrial systems (Walkenhorst & Dihel, 2016). On the other hand, multinational firms benefit from the labor market since efficient transportation systems reduce the costs of accessing labor, increase access to labor, and facilitate the use of cheaper labor since organizations can access labor from a global perspective. Hence, transportation is regarded as an economic factor of production since it is essential in the generation of goods and services. Transportation also presents significant impacts on the economic factors, including facilitating geographic specialization, increased competition, large-scale production, and increased value of land.
Although efficient transportation systems are closely linked with diverse economic and social benefits, the transportation sector faces some challenges, which mainly hinder the sector from ensuring the required safety and security standards. The diverse transportation networks facilitate the activities of terrorists, human traffickers, human smugglers, and drug traffickers, arms traffickers, among other criminals who rely on the safe locations and secure transportation networks to execute the illegal activities. The majority of criminals, especially those that are required to produce travel documents, use fraudulently obtained or created documents, including visas and passports to move from one region to another as well as to reside illegally in new countries or regions (Walkenhorst & Dihel, 2016). The international criminals, target specific places as their ideal meeting points to conduct their illegal activities, and transportation terminals are mainly used to facilitate drug and human trafficking among other criminal activities since the criminals cannot be easily detected or suspected.
The lack of sufficient resources to ensure 100% security in the transportation networks contributes to the existence of the loopholes that criminals take advantage of to conduct their criminal activities. The insecurity in the transport networks affects both the customers, who encounter theft and loss of lives, particularly in cases of terrorist attacks, and the firms operating within the transportation sector, who lose assets to the activities of the criminals. Aggarwala, Fenello, and FitzGerald (2016) postulate that the disappearance of the Malaysian aircraft MH370 that had 239 passengers on board is the most recent case, where the disappearance of the plane led to massive losses to the Malaysian company not only in terms of the plane but also customers, which indicated loss of business.
In response to the insecurity concerns in the transport sector, stakeholders have implemented diverse security measures, particularly at border points, water terminals, and air terminals. Stakeholders have also invested in sophisticated screening devices to prevent the entry or exit of illegal commodities from a country (Aggarwala, Fenello & FitzGerald, 2016). The measures have demonstrated significant success in enhancing security particularly in instances where illegal drugs and weapons are impounded. However, despite the implementation of the measures criminal activities still occur in the transportation sector. Criminals mainly focus on identifying the critical loopholes in the transportation networks and maximize them to execute their criminal activities. In most cases, people working in airports are always in a hurry as they strive to meet timelines; thus they rarely pay attention to such details as confirming that the traveling documents presented are authentic. Such loopholes allow for terrorists to gain entry into different countries. Further, the loopholes favor human smuggling and human trafficking activities. In some cases, airport employees fail to conduct thorough screening on the cargo; thus facilitating the transportation of illegal drugs in diverse global destinations.
According to Notteboom and Winkelmans (2012), the transportation of illegal commodities is connected to logistics, which is defined as the process of facilitating efficient movement and storage of goods and services from their points of origin to the points of consumption. Bowersox, Closs, and Cooper (2012) argue that the management of the transport sector is often costly, and in most cases, it is impossible to install screening gadgets at all corners of the transport terminals since the gadgets are too expensive and they cannot be efficiently covered by the revenues that are generated from offering transportation services. Another recommended action for enhancing security in transport terminals is hiring more security personnel; however, hiring more people would increase the firms’ operating costs due to the increase in the salary expenses, an idea that most firms avoid, since they seek to lower their costs so that they can generate higher profits and avoid incurring losses.
Training security personnel on the modern approaches of handling insecurity issues is also expensive, mainly when they are scheduled for several sessions; thus most firms opt to cut on the cost by providing the security personnel with the necessary training about the management of insecurity cases (Gourdin, 2016).
The primary factor that is associated with insecurity issues in the transport sector is the lack of sufficient resources to invest in adequate security systems, adequate training of the security personnel, as well as hiring sufficient security personnel. According to Thomas (2010), resolving the insecurity problem in the transportation sector requires the establishment of partnerships between the transport firms and the government, since the insecurity issue is not only the concern of the firms in the sector but also a public concern. Government action and support is crucial in providing the financial support that transport firms lack to invest in efficient security systems, which are costly to purchase and maintain.
References
Aggarwala, N., Fenello, M. J., & FitzGerald, G. F. (2016). Air hijacking: an international perspective (No. 585). Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Bowersox, D. J., Closs, D. J., & Cooper, M. B. (2012). Supply chain logistics management (Vol. 2). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Gourdin, K. (2016). Global logistics management: a competitive advantage for the 21st century . Wiley-Blackwell.
Mariotti, I. (2015). Transport and logistics in a globalizing world: a focus on Italy . Cham: Springer.
Notteboom, T. E., & Winkelmans, W. (2012). Structural changes in logistics: how will port authorities face the challenge?. Maritime Policy & Management , 28 (1), 71-89.
Thomas, A. (2010). Supply chain security: international practices and innovations in moving goods safely and efficiently . Santa Barbara, Calif: Praeger.
Walkenhorst, P., & Dihel, N. (2016). Trade impacts of increased border security concerns. The International Trade Journal , 20 (1), 1-31.
