FOLLOWING the Field’s Hill truck accident in which many lives were lost, the MEC for Transport Community Safety and Liaison, Willies Mchunu, spear-headed a two-hour roadblock on the M13 on Thursday.
The event was ear-marked to officially launch Transport month and the re-launch of Operation Phezukwabo, which is set to focus on intensifying law enforcement on heavy-load vehicles, including trucks and buses.
“As part of our law enforcement campaign we established the Traffic Fine Tracing Task Team, which started operating on 16 July this year,” said Mchunu.
RTI officials, along with the Metro Police, were out in full force on Thursday 3 October. The combined teams stopped and inspected every vehicle that passed the St Helier off-ramp.
“I am happy with the progress and the process that has followed,” said Mchunu. “Ninety trucks were pulled over within two hours and three or four of them were fine for various transgressions.”
According to Rick Crouch, councillor for Ward 10, the operation was too little too late.
“The MEC put on a great show at the roadblock but it is not going to prevent another accident. He has still not stopped the trucks using Fields Hill. He and others are missing the point, it is mainly the weigh station that majority of the trucks are avoiding not the toll.”
He suggested that the weigh station be moved to before the M13 – N3 or activate a weigh station on the M13.
“I renew my call for the MEC to ban all heavy trucks from Fields Hill while his new task team investigates and decides what to do, if he does not we will be looking at more deaths,” said Crouch.
Ward 18 councillor Tim Brauteseth said the Fields Hill stretch of the M13 was never engineered to cater for heavy duty vehicles.
“How then do we expect these vehicles to negotiate this stretch of road? The argument should stop there. If the road was not engineered for such use, then don’t use it,” said Brauteseth. He said one day of operation Phezukwabo will not resolve the enforcement issues on the M13.
