Old nightmares on the north-south route serving southern Africa’s Copperbelt mining area have reappeared to haunt hauliers – border-crossing congestion and crippling road infrastructure slowing road-freight movement to a snail’s pace.
For weeks now long-distance operators have complained about the condition of the road from Chililabombwe in Zambia to the Kasumbalesa border into the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
One transporter described that stretch - potholed and severely impacted by heavy truck traffic and long-overdue road maintenance - as “a mess!”
Commenting on how dangerous its road surface is, he said: “You have to stop and then try and manoeuvre through.” (*)
This morning Mike Fitzmaurice, chief director of the Federation of East and Southern African Road Transport Associations, said the northbound queue to the border was back to where it had been a couple of years ago – 20-28 kilometres on a daily basis.
Back then issues experienced with processing cargo at the border itself proved a real headache, until trade-facilitating interventions started paying dividends.
Smooth operations at Kasumbalesa, however, seem to have been short-lived.
Fitzmaurice said Zambia’s Road Development Agency had set aside funds to upgrade the road from Chililabombwe but it seemed to be a case of too little too late.
“There is no timeframe to when that will happen and the budget is not such that it will be a complete rehabilitation.
“Most likely it will be about filling potholes and hoping that it’ll work.”
In what seems to be a bit of blame game, Zambian authorities have also been pinning the cause for the northbound queue on infrastructural upgrades on the DRC’s side of the border.
It’s an excuse though that doesn’t wash with transporters used to the usual loads carried north and backhaul trips going south.
This morning one such operator explained that there was no reason why a trucking facility on the export-side out of the DRC should contribute to congestion problems in Zambia.
It’s not to say though that there aren’t southbound issues.
Fitzmaurice, for one, confirmed that the queue of trucks heading to Kasumbalesa in the DRC was as bad as the one in Zambia.
The southbound way for empty trucks also remains taxing on the pocket, with transporters hit hard to use the newly tarred road of some 90 kilometres from Kasumbalesa to Mokambo.
Previously a dirt track from hell, especially in the rainy season, it cost $50 per empty truck to use the notorious road. Since the Mokambo road’s upgrade, hauliers now have to pay $100 for the last stretch out of the DRC.
Then, once they have reached Mokambo, they have to cross the border back into Zambia where another hellish dirt track awaits them – a mud strip of about 41 kilometres to Mufulira.
Fitzmaurice said it would be much easier and more efficient to allow trucks to continue beyond Mokambo towards the border south of Sakania, but the DRC won’t allow empty trucks on that road as it’s been reserved for loaded transports.
Footage seen by Freight News about the way to Mufulira clearly shows how bad that road is, supporting transporter gripes that the north-south route in the Copperbelt is a headache at the moment.
“It’s back to where it was,” Fitzmaurice said, bemoaning how quickly cross-border road freight around the Kasumbalesa region had again deteriorated.
Yesterday traffic to Mokambo from Mufulira was so bad that trucks had to be diverted through bushveld after a rig got stuck in the mud.
* Read this for context: https://tinyurl.com/2p8m3dre
