From The Editor

So everyone rushed to the scene, from the vice President down. And everyone issued statements about how we have to curb overloading of trucks in this country. And they have ‘banned’ the weighbridge operators and put in Army personnel instead. But it is all too little, too late.

For many years now, certainly since 1992, road hauliers and the business community have been calling for Government to get their act together, to deal with the continued blatant disregarding of our Laws by some road hauliers, both local and foreign (and yes, I can name most of them). Not only have they been asking Government to do something, they have also been helping Government with this. They have carried out surveys at weighbridges to assess the extent of the damage. They have drawn up lists of the changes that need to be made to our existing legislation to make it more watertight (pun not intended). They have made recommendations on the number of operators they need at weighbridges. They have made suggestions on where new weighbridges should be developed and on the types of equipment that should be installed. They have visited shippers to explain to them how trucks should be loaded and given them approximate payloads that the different configurations of trucks should carry. They have even worked with the Anti-Corruption Commission to assist them with impounding trucks that are overloaded. But all to no avail.

Overloading consists of three main components – axle weights, tyre pressures and gross vehicle mass.

Axle weight is the weight transmitted to the road by a set of axles on a truck or a group of axles. Every tarmac road (overloaded axles do not damage dirt roads; in fact, empty trucks do more damage to dirt roads than do overloaded trucks) is built to carry a maximum axle weight and if this weight is exceeded, the foundations of the road start to collapse. This eventually results in the upper surface (the tarmac) cracking. Once the cracks start, water gets into them and within no time at all, a pothole has formed. If one takes a drive into Lusaka from Kafue, you will see, on the very left hand land, two continuous ruts along the road – this is the result of overloading.

A correctly loaded truck causes in the region of 25,000 times as much wear and tear on a road as an ordinary passenger vehicle. But overload a truck, and the damage increases. And it increases exponentially (i.e. a truck overloaded by eight tonnes on a axle does not cause eight times more damage than a truck overloaded by one tonne. The damage is far greater) Excessive overloading can shorten the life of a road from twenty years to as little as three years. Large buses can also be overloaded and can cause just as much damage as a truck. In fact, buses and rigid trucks cause more wear and tear per tonne than articulated rigs.

Tyre pressures cause damage to the actual tarmac surface. But compared with overloading axles, the damage is minimal. And if we can’t even control axle loadings, how are we ever going to control tyre pressures, so as this stage, I would not recommend trying to do anything about this.

Gross vehicle mass limits are legislated to protect bridges, where the entire truck is on the bridge (i.e. long bridges such as the bridge over the Kafue south of Lusaka,) and pontoons. Zambia has had a legislated Gross Vehicle Mass (GVM) in place since at least 1992, but to this day, and despite requests by various people, Government has not yet started enforcing this GVM. I have never been able to find out the reason for their reluctance, but last week, at Kasungula, we saw the results – a number of people dead or injured and a pontoon, truck and the load sunk. And don’t forget the effects on the environment from the load it was carrying being washed into the Zambezi River. Nyaminyami is surely not a happy chap.

The question to be asked is how was this allowed to happen. And it can be answered in one single word – CORRUPTION - bribes either being paid to the ever hungry operators at the weighbridges or bribes being paid to higher up officials (and politicians) in the relevant ministries. And I have seen this happen; I have been at weighbridges when Ministers have driven to the weighbridge to request that a specific truck be released. I say request because I am sure it only became a request because of my presence there. Had I not been there, it would undoubtedly have been an instruction to release the truck. And the weighbridge operator, knowing he will not be able to find another job anywhere, would have complied with the ‘request’.

Corruption, of course, is the main reason for our inability to control overloading, but there are other less important reasons – insufficient weighbridges on strategic routes (although Kafue Weighbridge is ideally situated as the only way round it involves a trip of an extra few hundred kilometres); not enough operators to man the weighbridges 24/7 although the last few times I have stopped at weighbridges, I am assured by the operators (and the officials at the Roads Department) that the bridges are operating 24/7. Yet I often see for myself that the weighbridges are not open at night. I also suspect that many decision makers are unwilling to make the tough decisions that need to be made in this regard because they, or their ‘brother’, has an interest in a trucking company.

But whatever the reasons, overloading is the cause of billions of Kwacha’s worth of damage being done to our roads every year. And now, we see loss of lives as well. And not just one or two, but a significant number and in horrendous circumstances. I am told that the driver of the truck could be heard blowing the hooter of the truck for a full three minutes after it sank, trying to attract the attention of bystanders as the water rose in the cab around him.

Yet, as I write this, the owner of the truck and the person who loaded this load on the truck, are undoubtedly sound asleep at home, all nice and cosy with their respective wives next to them and their children in the room next door. And the politicians and civil servants who have failed for all these years to deal with the overloading issue – they’re also sleeping nicely, having had a good meal and probably a couple of Mosis with their meal, having had such a bad day at the office because they had to deal with a sunken pontoon.

But not so for those people who died and certainly not so for the families of these people who have probably lost the only breadwinner in the family. Yes, in my view the decision-makers who failed to make the decisions and have them acted upon are responsible for the death of these people; as guilty as if they had walked up to them a put a bullet to their heads. And so too are the owner of the truck and the company that loaded the truck.

If it weren’t so serious, the comments of some of our leaders could have one rolling around on the floor with laughter – one person calling for ‘stricter control’; another directing that the Roads Department deploy weighbridges to detect overloaders. Where have these people been, asleep? Overloading has been going on in this region for years and let me warn you, unless someone is prepared to make a stand and start kicking a few heads in, it is going to continue and we are going to continue seeing the loss of lives and the loss of our national assets, our roads.

The practicalities and logistics of controlling overloading. It is not that difficult. All it takes is a bit of determination and a bit of money and a bit of work by the people responsible for drafting our legislation (although our existing legislation is more than sufficient to do the job in the meantime) and a bit of commitment. And this is really what we lack – determination and commitment to make overloading a thing of the past.

Forget about committees who sit around and talk about overload control. Yes, I’ve sat on many of these in the past, but all they are are a nice place to go when one wants to get away from the office for a while, a place where it is not necessary to make any decisions, and a reason not to act on anything – pass the blame onto the committee that is still debating this issue. Or better still – have a semenar (spelling error intended) where we can produce numerous reports and when we have finished, we can go home and throw them on the shelf with all the others to gather dust – we will have enriched ourselves through our allowances for attending the meeting; we will have enriched our knowledge of Zambia because the semenar will undoubtedly have been held in one of our tourist resorts, but we will be morally poorer because of it.

And what could we do immediately (and I’m talking TODAY) to make a start on overload control. If it were in my hands, I would have already withdrawn the operating permits of the transporter involved. And tomorrow, I would withdraw the operating permits of the other hauliers which we know overload to the absolute limit and have absolutely no regard for our Laws. This takes no time, it costs no money, it only needs a decision. And after the decision, it needs ACTION.

I am sure that by now you have realized that overloading is an issue that is very close to my heart. And it is an issue that will continue to be close to my heart. And it is an issue that should be close to everyone’s heart, because the results of it, affects each of us every single day of our lives. If it is not the potholes that we have to negotiate daily, then it is the increased cost of transport which is reflected in the price we pay for every commodity or service that we purchase.