Drivers blame truck owners for accidents

Kampala. Long distance commercial truck drivers have called for a tripartite arrangement among them, the truck owners and government, to sort out road carnage caused by trailers.
Speaking at a dialogue between commercial truck drivers and traffic police on Friday, Mr Charles Edeun, the chairman of Uganda Professional Drivers’ Network, said theft of goods on transit and fatal road accidents caused by such vehicles are just the tip of an iceberg of the mess in the Import and Export industry which needs to be urgently addressed.
“How do you give someone goods worth Shs700m without a contract, no insurance, apart from just a mere key of the vehicle, the driver is poorly remunerated, sometimes is on treatment without access to drugs?” he said while referring to some of the reasons the drivers raised to the traffic police as the causes of accidents.

Challenges
During the meeting in Mbuya trailer yard on Friday, the drivers asked police to analyse the magnitude of challenges they face as managers of a highly tempting unregulated business in which they listed 14 reasons why they cause accidents.
Among the causes they mentioned are; absence of training, police accepting bribes from offenders, very poor road designs, tough customs policies, limited fuel given to them by truck owners, poor motor vehicle maintenance culture by the vehicle owners, poor upkeep facilitation while on duty, majority of trucks in dangerous mechanical condition being allowed on road and lack of resting spaces, among others.
“Drivers sell off the processed coffee and fish for export which disappears before reaching Mombasa, because of such reasons. A Ugandan driver cannot sit in a restaurant with a Kenyan driver because of the perdiem they get,” Mr Bob Mbege, a freelance truck driver, sometimes working with World Food Programme, said.

Police speak out

Ms Ruth Kyobutungi, the Regional Traffic Officer for Kampala Metropolitan East, who represented the Commissioner for Traffic, said they are ready to listen to the truckers and come up with solutions to their challenges, saying they have been too disorganised and difficult to work with.
“They have never been organised like the bus and taxi operators yet we know that they have problems with their bosses who only show up when their vehicles have cases to answer,” she said.
Uganda Police registered a 8.6 per cent reduction in the number of accidents reported in 2016 from 14,474 in 2016 to 13,244 in 2017. Of these, 3,051 were fatal, 6,530 serious and 3,663 were minor.