NAIROBI: The firm that operates weighbridges in the country says it has forwarded a list of heavy trucks notorious for overloading to the Kenya National Highway Authority (KeNHA).
Societe Generale de Surveillance (SGS) Managing Director Albert Stockell said in Mombasa Sunday that unscrupulous transporters had devised unorthodox methods to defeat technologies mounted at the weighbridges, including smearing number plates with mud, to dodge CCTV camera surveillance.
Statistics from SGS and KeNHA, however, indicate a high level of compliance with weight limits, with only 15 trucks out of over 2,000 plying the Mombasa-Malaba route flouting the load limits every day.
“Trucks that comply with the speed limits take only a minute at the weighbridges because we have mounted the High Speed Weighing in Motion (HSWIM) system, which weighs a truck while it is in motion,” said Mr Stockell during a tour of the Mariakani weighbridge.
Japan International Co-operation Agency (Jica) revealed in a 2011 study that the East Africa region spends over $24 million (Sh2.16 billion) on road maintenance per year and that the money could be saved if the region eliminated the problem of overloading.
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Sunday, Stockell said it costs $1 million (Sh90 million) to repair one kilometre of road and that renewed efforts to deal with the overloading problem would save the country a lot of money.
“Our main priority is actually to facilitate legitimate trade because a few unscrupulous transporters had clogged the weighbridges,” said Stockell.
According to KeNHA’s Axle Load Control Manager, Muita Ngatia, the SGS system installed at the Mariakani weighbridge in December last year had reduced the cost of transporting cargo as less time was spent at the weighbridge.
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“This means transporters can now make several trips in a week,” said Mr Ngatia in a statement Sunday.
Transporters and importers say the time taken to transport cargo from Mombasa to Malaba has also reduced from 10 days to three.
The SGS Build Operate and Transfer (BOT) tender is expected to end this year and Sunday, Stockell said the company had almost finished all the work it was supposed to do. He said the firm was currently fine-tuning the weighbridge control centre where all the information gathered by the 17 weighbridges is transmitted to.
SGS operated four major weighbridges in Mariakani, Athi River, Gilgil and Webuye, but also manages seven other small weighbridges as well as the six mobile stations.
Stockell said the firm had substituted the manual system at the weighbridges by automating all its servers, leading to reduced corruption.
“We have some unscrupulous transporters smearing their (number) plates with mud.
“We submitted to KeNHA the names of habitual offenders for further action. They can’t escape,” Stockell said.
Ngatia said the new technology had reduced human contact and “motivated motorists to comply with the rules, drastically reducing the manipulation of records”.
He said in the past, it was the police who decided which vehicle to weigh on the static scale, but with the automatic system there was no short cut.
Other innovative technologies installed include automated number plate recognition cameras, cameras for automatically recording truck details, traffic control equipment and census loops and loggers.
