Role players in the transport and logistics industry have called for protection following a spate of trucks set alight in the country.
They form part of those gathered at the CSIR in Pretoria on Day 2 of the 41st Southern African Transport Conference.
Two more trucks have been set alight at Empangeni in KwaZulu-Natal overnight. This comes after at least 15 trucks were torched in separate incidents over the weekend in three provinces, KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga and Limpopo.
Director of Heavy Vehicle Transport Technology Africa, Dr Paul Nordengen says there is a need for concrete interventions to safeguard the trucks, drivers and the country’s economy.
“It’s tragic what’s happening in the last few days. From an economic point of view obviously a closure of this major corridors has a huge impact on the freight movement. Many of the transport operators their contracts have a very fine margins so when they have delays it has a huge impact on their margins especially the smaller companies.
Economic sabotage
Meanwhile, the South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu) has condemned the attacks on trucks in the last few days.
Satawu says in a statement that these attacks amounts to economic sabotage. It has expressed its concern that the motive for the attacks is not yet known.
The union says it will write a formal letter of complaint to Police Minister Bheki Cele, requesting police escorts among other things.
The video is discussing attacks on trucks:
Attackers identified
KwaZulu-Natal police spokesperson Jay Naicker says people who took part in the attack on 6 trucks on Saturday night at Van Reenens Pass have been identified from video material.
Following another attack on trucks – this time 2 trucks were set alight on the N2 at Empageni last night, Naicker has announced that the investigations have been handed over to the Hawks. He says police are confident of a breakthrough soon.
“We have put in permanent deployment on day and night basis that will be patrolling these routes. so a lot of our resources have been put into that. In terms of investigation we can confirm that the investigations have been centralized to the Provincial Organized Crime Unit. They have already started their work in terms of profiling certain individuals, we’ve interviewed the drivers of the trucks that were affected as well as the victims. They have downloaded video footages from different sources to identify the perpetrators and we are quite certain that we will be able to make a breakthrough soon.”
Hawks are now investigating what appears to be coordinated attacks:
N4 Road re-opened
The N4 road in Waterval Boven in Mpumalanga has been re-opened after five trucks were torched on Sunday night. Road workers spent most of Monday cleaning the road and it was re-opened this morning.
The managers of the N4 toll road – the Trans African Concessions (TRAC) – have confirmed that the road is re-opened for traffic.
TRAC spokesperson Solange Soares says, “TRAC N4 can confirm that the road between crossroads and Waterval Boven is opened this morning just after 1 AM. This resulted the road being closed for more than 24 hours following the torching of five trucks early on Monday morning, the road is clear no backlog are reported in the section and this stage the road is safe for travelling.”
