Truck drivers starve in queue at Malaba

At around 8pm last Saturday, truck driver Abed Ahmad exited his vehicle and started vomitting, saying he had not eaten food in two days. He had not left the truck to ensure he stays in a queue, which had more than 800 truck drivers at Malaba border. 
Mr Ahmad arrived from Kampala on Friday with a loaded truck destined for Kenya. He thought he would take a few minutes to cross the Malaba border into Kenya.
“I arrived in Tororo (District) on Saturday morning and was hoping to cross to Kenya within a short time, but I reached around Rock Classic Hotel, I found a long queue of trucks which had not been cleared for more than 24 hours,” Mr Ahmad said on Sunday.
“Because I have no money, I have found it very hard to find food or drinking water. I am starving and yet I have ulcers,” Mr Ahmad, who is among hundreds of truck drivers caught up in the backlog, added.
Truck driver Suleiman Ali, who has spent two days in the queue, said he has  money but there are no food vendors on some sections of the Tororo-Malaba Road.
He said he had also not bathed in three days  and was finding it hard to access toilet facilities or shops since the place was deserted, criminals are targeting their trucks for fuel and batteries during night hours.
Queue
The long queue of trucks, which stretches from Tororo Town to the Malaba border, is close to 10kms long, and has left close to 800 trucks, both empty and those carrying cargo, stuck for more than three days.
Mr Haruna Wadda Mutebi, the acting manager of Uganda Revenue Authority (URA)  for the eastern region, at the weekend said URA handles about 1,300 trucks daily at Malaba. 
The jam has been attributed to the malfunctioning of the cargo scanner on the Kenyan side of the border, according to Mr Sowedi Katamba, a truck driver, who has spent two days in the queue.
He added: “The cargo scanner on the Kenyan side is too slow and sometimes trucks have to drive through it like five times for it to capture and reflect cargo details before one is allowed to drive away.”
In addition, Mr Katamba said the scanner is “old and keeps breaking down”, which holds up the trucks because the policy of the government of Kenya is that all trucks, whether empty or loaded, have to drive through the scanner.
Mr Andrew Orono, the Malaba Town Council LC3 chairman, said apart from the scanner being slow, the person capturing the truck details is in Nairobi and has to notify Kenya Revenue Authority officials in Malaba for a truck to be allowed to proceed, which takes a lot of time.
Mr Orono thinks it is time the scanning process for the empty trucks is suspended by Kenyan authorities to curb delays and congestion.
But despite having a “poor” scanner, Kenya said it will continue scanning all trucks - whether loaded or empty, according to Mr Kipchumba Murukomen, the Works and Transport Cabinet Secretary, who was at the Malaba border at the weekend with his Ugandan counterpart, Mr Musa Ecweru.
Scanning, Mr Kipchumba said, is a “security matter”, adding that even if the truck is empty or not, they shall scan it because some drivers connive with wrong elements to smuggle drugs and other contraband which cannot be detected by the naked eye. 
However, Mr Kipchumba added that his government plans to install modern scanners to promote efficiency and reduce time wastage at the body, while Mr Ecweru reassured Malaba residents that the problem of congestion at the border will be sorted out within two weeks.
Mr Kipchumba also said the Ruto-led government is mooting plans to set up a border committee to expedite processes and dispute resolution.