Border post delays and fines hold back users of what is being labelled a 'white elephant'
WHAT HAS been described as the super highway - the Trans-Kalahari expressway joining Gauteng with Walvis Bay in Namibia via Botswana - has turned into anything but super since its April 1998 opening.
I doubt whether 3% of road transport to-and-from Gauteng uses the highway, Willie du Toit, m.d. of FP du Toit Transport in Windhoek, and chairman of Namroad (Namibian Road Carriers' Association) told FTW last week.
This, according to EP van Rooyen, m.d. of Wesbank Transport in Walvis Bay (Namibia's main port city), is mainly a result of serious delays at Botswana border posts, and all sorts of charges and fines that are rather arbitrarily imposed on the run across this intervening state.
We won't use this road until all these problems have been sorted out, he said. And this requires a top-level meeting - at ministerial level - between our Namibian government and the authorities in Botswana.
However, Du Toit added, this might be about to happen.
The only light on the horizon, he said, is that the two governments are setting up a joint route-management group - with the first meeting planned for the end of February.
This follows Namroad having put as much pressure on both governments as it could over the past year. We've done a lot from our side, said Du Toit, and this is the first positive result from all our efforts.
Namroad will also be representing the road transporters' interests at the meetings of the route-management group, and hopes are high that an amicable settlement can be reached between the two governments.
Namibia has already indicated that it is prepared to open its border post for 24-hours-a-day, said Du Toit, an exercise that would do a lot to reduce the current delays - which largely negate the supposed time advantage in using the highway.
But the Botswana government has been silent on this up to now. We hope that the new group will be able to rectify this problem - along with all the other grievances attached to using the Trans-Kalahari Highway.
Van Rooyen suggests
that these sort of problems shouldn't exist - especially in the sub-Saharan region which is aiming at forming a unified, free-trade area.
The road regulations in the SADC (Southern African Development Community) countries should be level playing fields, he said, not only from the regulation point-of-view, but also in their interpretation.
This interpretation problem, he added, was the prime grievance being expressed by road carriers when looking at the Botswana leg of the highway transit.
The two governments, Van Rooyen said, must sort this out, otherwise the highway will remain a white elephant.
By Alan Peat
