Overload makes road repairs costly

The rate at which roads and bridges are depreciating due to overload trucks is worrying Rwanda.

The country is considering setting up modern weighbridges to measure the gross vehicle mass at all its border posts to help in enforcing axle load limits.

Without weighbridges, reports indicate that between 20-40 percent of roads and bridges are damaged by over-loading.

Enforcing axle load limits in Rwanda on the 14,000 kilometre road network is a difficult task as most weighbridges are not functioning.

The problem is exacerbated by lack of personnel to operate the old complicated weigh bride equipment.

For example the weighbridge at Gatuna, a crucial entry point to Rwanda, has been lying idle for years. The raised platform is very narrow.

This poses a risk of vehicles slipping over the edges even though the sides are provided with reinforced guiding posts.

Trucks have always knocked down the bridge posts during experimental weighing. Worse still, the weighing platform can only measure the Gross Vehicle Mass (mass of the vehicle plus the load including passengers.

The software at the weighbridges is not user friendly. It has 37 steps to follow before the reading can be done. It therefore wastes importers’ time.

What does this translate into? The desolate bridges have left roads in Rwanda to the mercy of transporters known for overloading trucks to cash in on the lucrative Kigali route.

The route has become very attractive to transporters partly because of no enforcement on tonnage limits.

Last year alone, Rwanda Revenue Authority cleared 7,190 cargo trucks, 5,025 of which were foreign registered. The volume of cargo transported on Rwandan roads has also been increasing. Last year the volume grew to 950 million tonnes, up from 670 million tonnes in 2001.

With the increasing traffic on her roads, Rwanda cannot depend on information from Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania weighbridges. Why?

Surveys carried out on both northern and central transport corridors show some officials manning weighbridges are corrupt. They take bribes to falsify the actual tonnage of the vehicles. In the circumstances, it’s futile for Rwanda to rely on the data provided by the neighbouring countries’ weighbridge authorities. 

The checkpoints in these countries are described as “bribe soliciting and giving centres.”

On the Kigali-Mombasa route alone, truck drivers say $897 is spent in bribes on a single trip.

After taking bribes, the weighbridge officials will clear an overloaded truck to use regional roads thus reducing their lifespan. This leaves Rwandan roads highly vulnerable.  “Unless the problem of overloaded axles and gross vehicle masses (GVM) are tackled and resolved with appropriate measures, the current initiative to improve the road network will be in vain. Immensely precious resources could have been better used in other sectors of the economy,” Rwanda Transport Agency officials have warned in a report.

The warning comes shortly after commissioning of the multi-million dollar Ruhengeri-Gisenyi road project.

The bid for rehabilitation of Kigali-Gatuna road has also been announced and the contract to expand and rehabilitate the Kigali-Ruhengeri has been concluded. These are multi-million dollar projects in Rwanda coming almost at the same time. The 83km modern tarmac road from Ruhengeri to Gisenyi alone cost the government of Rwanda $52 million. The money was secured from the European Union.

It is hoped the opening of these roads will boost trade between the East African Community bloc and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as the cargo traffic will increase and the costs reduce.

The Ruhengeri-Gisenyi road built by Strabag, a German construction firm, was upgraded from 5 to 7 metres wide, enabling two trucks to bypass each other easily.

Linda Bihire, Rwanda infrastructure minister, describes the road as ‘’standard to handle more traffic.”

“The width is 7 metres, (layers from the ground) the sub base is 20 cm, the base course is 20 cm and the surfacing (top layer) is 9 cm,” Bihire explained the thickness of the road.

There is a 1.5 meters pavement on each side of the road to enable pedestrians move safely. The pedestrians have been competing with close to 1,200 vehicles that use the Ruhengeri-Gisenyi-Goma in DRC daily.

Eastern DRC is endowed with reach minerals, timber and agricultural products but some of these resources.

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