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TRUCKING INDUSTRY WORLDWIDE - DANGEROUS ROADS in Afghanistan & Rwanda / Tanzania border
* Africa / Tanzania: Truck owners for road toll saga settlement
Dar es Salaam,Tanzania -All Africa, by Alvar Mwakyusa -5 Sept 2013: -- Local truck owners have appealed to the government to immediately engage Rwandan authorities regarding the hiked road toll which they say will have adverse effect for the central transport corridor and the port of Dar es Salaam... Rwanda increased by over three times road toll for trucks from Tanzania from 152 USD to 500 USD effective last Sunday. The new toll has, however, been suspended for a week to pave way for negotiations between governments of the two countries... Cargo volume along the route is estimated at 600,000 tonnes each month. The corridor carries transit consignments destined for Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and parts of north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) such as Bukavu, Kivu and Goma through Rwanda... Before the new rates, truck owners used to charge between 4,000 and 4,200 USD from Dar es Salaam to Kigali, but they will be forced to increase the charge to accommodate the road toll increment...
* Rwanda - Truckers have only 6 days to pay new duty
Kigali,Rwanda -THE GUARDIAN REPORTER/IPP Media -5th September 2013: -- Rwanda Revenue Authorities (RRA) has given Tanzanian transporters ten days from September 1, this year to prepare for the new road maintenance fee of USD500 for every truck entering the central African state... According to a letter from RRA Commissioner General, Ben Kagarama, to his Tanzanian counterpart, Rwanda decided to increase the fee from USD152 to USD500 for trucks from Tanzania on September 1 this year to allow fair competition in the cross-border transport industry... However, the letter said, based on the complaints raised by Tanzanian transporters that they were not prepared to pay the new charges, especially for the trucks that were already enroute to Kigali, the RRA has decided to postpone charging the new fees until September 10, this year...
* Afghanistan - Truck drivers see their dangerous jobs getting deadlier
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Kabul,Afghanistan -Los Angeles Times (USA), by Mark Magnier -September 5, 2013: -- The Taliban, police and thieves compete for control of Afghanistan's roads, with NATO truckers the target of attacks and extortion... Heading southeast out of the capital, Kabul's tightly packed concrete walls give way to vacant lots, dusty shops and half-finished construction projects conceived in better times. Makeshift memorials of plastic flowers peek from rock piles marking long-forgotten traffic accidents in a land where death is rarely a stranger... Along the shoulder of the potholed road just past the last Kabul checkpoint, truck driver Latif adjusts decorative fabric strips hanging from his side mirror. He's been here three days, sleeping in his 18-wheeler, guzzling too much tea, waiting for the rest of a convoy to coalesce and head for a NATO base in eastern Ghazni province, along the so-called death route to Kandahar... Analysts with fancy titles debate Afghanistan's security outlook after 2014, when foreign combat troops complete their withdrawal. But Afghan truckers doing their thankless yet increasingly deadly job along this industrial stretch have little doubt. Many say they can feel the situation worsening by the month... Latif, 29, who, like many Afghans, uses one name, points to the hills a few hundred yards away. They're filled with the Taliban, he says, this close to Kabul. Let's not talk too long. If they see us with a foreigner, they'll kill us... A light drizzle turns into tiny daggers of rain, so Latif and two other drivers retreat to the back of a car, the windows steaming up from their heated mutton pilaf as the discussion turns to the life — and life expectancy — of a road warrior... And if you die, your relatives might never know it with certainty, he adds, particularly if the Taliban steals your ID and their attack leaves you unrecognizable... In many ways, analysts say, Afghanistan couldn't function without its truckers, who carry virtually everything the population consumes... A few hundred yards from Latif and his friends, fellow driver Baryalai Haidari, 32, is parked in a bare-bones truck stop. He has a different survival strategy: He avoids NATO shipments, NATO drivers, NATO convoys, even if it means less money, and he never moves at night, when insurgents are busy planting their roadside bombs... "We slip through during the day while they're snoozing," he says...
Labels: border troubles, dangerous roads, trucking industry worldwide
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