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Traffic volumes increase on national roads

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Traffic volumes are expected to increase on the N1, N6 and N8 on Friday. This is according to Chief Director of Traffic Management in the Free State Nako Ramotsoto.

Ramotsoto says 500 cars per hour have been passing the Verkeerdevlei Toll Gate near Bloemfontein. Only one accident has been reported near Gariep Dam with no serious injuries.

Ramotsoto says seven people have been arrested for speeding in the province on Friday, exceeding 160km per hour. Ramotsoto has urged motorists, especially taxi drivers to obey the rules this festive season and have roadworthy vehicles, not drink and drive or use cellphones while driving.

The N1 and the Beitbridge border post between South Africa and Zimbabwe in Limpopo have started experiencing high traffic volumes. Heavily loaded vehicles and towing trailers could be seen traveling towards the border.

Traffic police officials have been deployed at all identified strategic intersections.

Transport MEC Makoma Makhurupetje has advised motorists to drive carefully.

Traffic flow is expected to increase well into the Christmas holidays.

Overloading and over-speeding remain some of the biggest challenges.

Some heavily loaded vehicles could be seen broken down along the road. Others have been there for days.

A joint operations at the traffic weigh bridge earlier in the day has yielded some positive results.

Several illegal foreigners were intercepted. Even those who were on their way to Zimbabwe were taken in to be screened if they don’t have pending criminal cases.

Police’s Major General Jan Scheepers says the special operations will continue until January.

Limpopo MEC for Transport Makoma Makhurupetje says statistics for people who died on road accidents are lower this year as compared to the same period last year.

Makhurupetje says that last year around this time 141 people had already died on the roads.

This year, the province has lost only 92 lives Makoma says, “Since we have started from the 1st of November with operation Ndadzi I think we have reduced the number of fatalities and by today when we compare by this time in 2016 we were at around 142 and today we are at 92 we think we are lower,but for us one person is too many to die on our roads and we are saying lets obey the rules of the road lets drive within the speed limit let’s make sure that when we are tired we rest let’s make sure that we don’t overtake on a barrier line.”

Meanwhile, some holidaymakers travelling through the Beitbridge border post between South Africa and Zimbabwe have complained of the slow processing of their documents on the South African side.

Hundreds of travellers are using the port of entry.

In response, Home Affairs authorities at the Beitbridge border post in Musina have attributed the delay in the processing of documents to technical glitches.

The department’s Stephen van Neel says the delay is caused by the new security system biometrics. Neel however denies that they spent several hours assisting one client.

“We have in our key ports of entries for security reasons in the last 12 months roll out biometrics at our port of entries and Beitbridge now up almost 100% of their systems have been turning into biometrics now, and is for that reason that you will have delays at our ports because it takes a little bit longer because we are taking finger prints and now obvious it delays a little bit of flow through the port.”

Traffic volumes are expected to increase this evening.

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