'Authorities are to blame for poor road conditions'

Wesbank's Van Rooyen calls for specialised traffic control THE BLAME for poor road conditions is always levelled at transport operators who are said to be overloading their vehicles, but, in reality, the truth lies elsewhere and in the hands of the authorities themselves, says "EP" van Rooyen, managing director of Wesbank Transport in Walvis Bay. "We are the soft targets they find in passing on the blame for the deteriorating road conditions, but it is their own inability to maintain these in a proper manner, and even to build them correctly that is the real basis of the problem," says the veteran operator regarded as the doyen of transporters in Namibia. "The road shoulders are never repaired correctly no matter where you travel. Cracks and pot-holes are not sealed correctly and traffic authorities have the habit of constantly pulling off vehicles at the most inconvenient and awkward spots. This applies in all the southern African regions we cover. The authorities do far more damage to the road surface than we as operators are responsible for," he says. "We had an incident a few weeks ago in Namibia where a traffic policeman pulled off several trucks, some of them ours and others belonging to different companies, and told the drivers they were not allowed to drive on public roads after dark. There is no such law in existence but by taking the law into his own hands he severely disrupted delivery schedules. And that, anyway, is the best driving time for heavy vehicles. "What we need is specialised road building operations and specialised traffic control, and not some official who pulls a 26-wheel vehicle off the road just anywhere and decides to examine it without having all the necessary test equipment available." Van Rooyen is also concerned about the lack of co-operation among SADC countries in regard to road transport operations. There are different rules at every border, he says.