Swaziland stalls traffic fine hike

Toll plans also on hold JAMES HALL MBABANE - Three recent developments amount to good news for road freight hauliers travelling through Swaziland. The main national highway connecting the Oshoek border post with the Matsapha Industrial Estate will not become a toll way, at least for the foreseeable future. Ways of implementing the toll collecting system are stalled in the transport ministry. Most truck traffic from Gauteng uses the Oshoek border post, moving on to Mbabane and the central commercial hub Manzini, just east of the Matsapha industries. A new bypass road to circumvent downtown Manzini opened last week in time for King Mswati’s dedication of a new International Trade Fair in the hills north of the town. Though only eight years old, the previous by-pass road was a pot-holed, slow-moving nightmare that was nonetheless a necessary route for big-rig trucks. It is being replaced by a dual carriageway that will traverse the entire length of Manzini with only one stop light interruption. A plan to raise traffic fines from R60 to R2000 will likely be scaled back before it receives parliamentary approval. The drastic escalation was a “knee-jerk political response” to a public outcry over a rash of road fatalities this past month, according to one road freight haulage executive in Matsapha. Recent traffic deaths, the highest number in a decade, were attributed to buses and kombis, and not to trucks. Complaints about the fine rise from commercial road users and the public have convinced MPs to consider a more measured increment.