The waiting time without access to proper amenities that long-distance truck drivers often find themselves in at bottlenecked borders ought to be addressed as a matter of urgency, Mbahupu Hippy Tjivikua of the Walvis Bay Corridor Group (WBCG) has said.
Speaking at a presentation in the Copperbelt city of Kitwe earlier today, the group’s CEO said it was unacceptable that it took up to five days or more for trucks to pass through the Kasumbalesa border post between Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
That the drivers don’t have access to proper facilities to sustain them while struggling to get into the DRC, “is inhumane”, Tjivikua said.
“We need to address these issues. These drivers are the engine of our economy and need to be treated as such.”
The weeks-long delay at that crossing has since been alleviated, with the Zambia Revenue Authority confirming earlier this week that the backlog queue south of Kasumbalesa had shrunk to Chililabombwe, the last town before the border.
While Tjivikua was delivering his presentation, the Federation of East and Southern African Road Transport Associations confirmed that the queue had decreased even more, with the tail sitting just north of Chililabombwe.
Be that as it may, the recent disruption of movement experienced at Kasumbalesa meant that the turnaround time for trucks from the Port of Walvis Bay to the DRC’s copper mines was badly affected.
Whereas Namibia’s most import corridor for logistics usually prided itself on a turnaround time of five to six days between Walvis and the Copperbelt, this had not been the case of late, Tjivikua said.
Besides Kasumbalesa, he also bemoaned the state of the road between Sesheke and Kazungula – such as it is (*).
* This part of Tjivikua’s presentation will be covered next week.
