By Mabinty M. Kamara
Drivers and passengers who frequently use the Jenner Wright Road and Bai Bureh Road in the east end of Freetown have expressed fears over the risk posed by trucks frequently parked along the routes.
The trucks are owned or managed by owners of private factories and dealers in cements, notably the Fawaz Building Materials, Ahmed Mackie Building Materials Store and the Milla Group of Companies.
If you are a usual commuter along those routes, you would have noticed containers loaded with goods from the Queen Elizabeth 2nd Quay, where they are cleared to be stored in warehouses scattered along those routes. This happen mostly around the evening hours, when people are rushing back home.
The situation, according to some commuters and drivers, doesn’t only cause traffic congestions during those rush hours, but it also poses risk of accident to other drivers along the road.
The most popular spot for such dangerous parking is between Cline Town and Up Gun, along the Jenner Wright Road, and Up Gun to the entrance of the Milla Factory outlet, along Bai Bureh Road.
The trucks are usually loaded with merchandise and are lined up for offloading. But occasionally empty trucks are seen parked along the routes.
Sometimes the line is so long that they take days on the highway, which is one of the busiest in Freetown.
Given the narrow nature of the road, at any time of the day this can be very dangerous for other vehicles using it. But at night it gets even more dangerous.
Poda Poda driver, Alpha Amadu Jalloh, recalled almost hitting a truck one night.
“This is where I nearly had an accident sometime back, at night. The vehicle didn’t have any reflector and I didn’t see it until I was closer,” Jalloh said, explaining his experience with the Milla vehicles.
Jalloh plies the Freetown - Waterloo route. He said besides the danger of accident, the trucks also cause a lot of traffic on the routes.
“The road is narrow, and so when those trucks park along it, they cause traffic and waste a lot of our time,” Jalloh told Politico.
According to him, sometimes they are forced to use Old Road, to avoid the traffic, which leaves many people who use the New Road stranded at Up Gun.
Keke rider Alusine Conteh appealed to the authorities to engage the companies parking their trucks along the routes to reconsider the act given the inconvenience they cause the rest of the road users.
“We know that they are business people and so they need to store their goods, but because our roads are small and their factories are along the main road, they should be doing it late in the night since the curfew has been lifted. The way they operate right now is very bad for us,” he said.
Sarah Sei, a commuter in Jalloh’s Poda –Poda, who introduced herself as a trader, expressed frustration over the situation. And she wondered what the law enforcement authorities are doing about it.
“By right police officers should be here each time these trucks are offloading, so that people do not get stuck in traffic unnecessarily. But they don’t care. Sometimes they offload the vehicles and still leave them on the road until the next day, which is even risky, because when they are parked, there is no light and you know how some drivers can be careless,” she said.
Politico visited Milla Group of Company’s factory outlet, twice. In one instance, it was shortly before midnight and trucks were still parked along the road to the entrance of the facility.
On a second visit in the day time, another reporter seeking reaction from the company was referred to their administrative office at P.C & Sons at Sani Abacha Street. But at the administrative office officials would not talk to us.
A security guard outside remarked that “even the police were aware of the situation,” as if to say that they had nothing to worry about.
We reached out to the Police Media and Public Relations Office, and Superintendent Brima Kamara, the head of the office, confirmed that they were indeed aware of the situation and said the companies were doing business and that storing their goods in their warehouses was part of the chain of commerce.
“That is where they park to offload their goods in their stores. I also ply that route. I stay in the east, but it’s not just Milla that park those trucks. There are other companies. So when they brought their goods, those good have to be taken to the warehouse. If you look at the chain of commercialization, warehouse is part of the process, the goods have to be stored; just that police should be there to manage the situation,” he said.
The police spokesman added: “But it will not change very soon because when they bring their goods in the country, they just have to take it from Water Quay to the warehouse for onward distribution, until it reaches the consumer.”
With regards the risk posed by the way the trucks are parked, Superintendent Kamara said it was a concern he was going to bring up with the authorities at the traffic division, noting that police officers are expected to be around to ensure that they regulate traffic and that other road users have access.
The Sierra Leone Road Safety Authority (SLRSA) regulates the usage of roads and it issues permit for the trucks to park under a special arrangement.
A spokesman for the authority told Politico that they provided permit to thr truckers and that they expected that every one of the vehicles should have a reflector. In addition, he noted, they expected that the companies will inform the police whenever they wanted to offload their trucks.
Abdukarim Dumbuya, Public Relations Officer of SLRSA, said between them, the truck owners and the police, they had agreed on a time to do the offloading, which is 10pm. He added that the companies were forced to do it in the afternoon because of the curfew, which was recently lifted.
“Since the curfew has been removed, we will sit with them again to get them back to offloading at night, instead of during the day, especially not during the rush hours, to reduce the pressure,” he said.
“Any vehicle that does not have a reflector will pay a fine of Le400, 000 and we seriously enforce that. But I will bring that up so that we monitor them during their offloading,” Dumbuya stressed.
Francis H. Murray contributed to this report
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