Tackling intimidation

Change low graphic options | Change language | Skip content to navigation

Page context: Home > Transport International Magazine > Issue 25 October 2006 > Tackling intimidation

Ochieng’ Ogodo reports on a new cross-border initiative between road transport workers’ unions in East Africa.

A long distance truck driver pulls his brakes at Salgaa on the Nairobi-Nakuru highway and the huge, dusty long haul truck crawls to a stop. A rather haggard looking driver in soiled clothes, emerges from the cab and looks around for a place to rest after more than 12 hours on the road, from Mombasa port.

Mombasa is the major gateway to seagoing business in Eastern Africa and the Northern Transit Transport Corridor. The railway and road network linking the port and some of the Eastern African Region countries commences here.

This route hosts drivers transporting goods as far as Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Northern Tanzania and Southern Sudan. Soon Ethiopia will be in the loop. It is a tough way to make a living. Wages are usually low, employment is casual and workers have few if any rights or benefits.

"Among their objectives are the removal of tedious clearance procedures at border posts, which foster excessive delays and corruption"

Drivers are constantly subjected to harassment, intimidation and extortion by policy and border officials. There is little in the way of provision for rest or recreation during long trips, and they are often forced by employers into unsafe working practices, for example by overloading their trucks.

However, long distance truck drivers’associations and unions, supported by the ITF, are fostering a new collaborative approach in an effort to help to change the situation.

Corridor collaboration
In the 1980s, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania initiated the Northern Corridor Transit Traffic Agreement aimed at the eradication of barriers to the unimpeded flow of goods and passengers in the region. The corridor, covering 7,000km, now extends to Kisangani in the DRC. This corridor is now the focal point of joint efforts to improve working conditions for the drivers who use it.

Case study:
Kenya, a tough place to be a trucker

An initiative has been agreed by the ITF and organisations including the Kenya Long Distance Truck Drivers’ Association (KLDTDA), Amalgamated Transport and General Workers’ Union of Uganda, Uganda Long Distance and Heavy Truck Drivers’ Association and the Communications and Transport Workers’ Union of Tanzania.

In June this year, they held a joint workshop in Nairobi, sponsored by the ITF and the US Center for Labor Solidarity, to enable them to evaluate how far governments, employers and workers are adhering to core labour standards in the corridor.

Following the workshop, the participants signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to cement their relationship and cooperation in the fight for better working terms and conditions for long distance truck drivers.

Among their objectives are the removal of tedious clearance procedures at border posts, which foster excessive delays and corruption at points such as Malaba and Busia on the Kenya-Uganda border, Namanga on the Kenya-Tanzania border, Gatina on the Rwanda-Uganda border and Kasese, which is the exit-entry point between Uganda and DRC.

“The delays also encourage changes in the social behaviour of drivers, who tend to go off to find something to do, including engaging in casual sex. This has led many drivers and their families to contract HIV,” says ITF deputy regional secretary Joseph Katende. The memorandum of understanding stipulates working together to ensure terms and conditions of service are improved upon and that members’ human and working rights are respected.

The organisations involved have committed, for example, to whistleblowing when corruption is detected by their members. They are also working to support each other more in their efforts to educate and inform drivers about HIV/AIDS, which has become a critical problem for the industry.

Numerous peaceful demonstrations have been held to protest against bad working conditions and mistreatment by police officers deployed along the route, and these will continue as long as the authorities concerned remain insensitive to the problem.

The ITF regional office made extensive plans to use the ITF Road Transport Action Week from 9 to 15 October to sensitise truck drivers and those who benefit from their services about workers’ rights and the current realities.

“We have planned demonstrations, radio discussions, TV panels, and public lectures on transport. The purpose is to communicate to the public,” said Katende. All unions taking part in the initiative are supporting the action day, as in the past, with their individual and also joint activities. In Uganda, for example, the union is hoping to bring border officials, police, drivers and members of the public together at border points, while also finding ways to support its colleagues across the border.

There is some history of mutual support for the new initiative to build upon, as David Baliraine, general secretary of the Amalgamated Transport and General Workers’ Union of Uganda, points out: “Last year we held a joint action week, meeting at the border posts. Our union representatives drove to Nairobi to support the demands of the Kenyan association for recognition as a union.”

Urgent need for a joint approach
The new impetus being generated by cooperation between truckers’ unions in the region is urgently needed to tackle systemic problems which, combined with the absence of employment contracts, makes individual cases very difficult to represent.

Unions believe there are unnecessarily large numbers of police roadblocks, for example from Mombasa to Kisangani and Bujumbura, which act as unofficial toll stations, where police officers coerce drivers into bribery.

Where there is a weighbridge, corruption thrives despite the rules in place. The trucks are deliberately overloaded by employers, who give their drivers money to bribe officials into looking the other way. This puts drivers’ lives in danger, because of the serious risk of burst tyres, and compels them into breaching regulations.

Drivers have no say on the amount of load they will transport – often they do not know what, let alone how much, they are carrying. Different national traffic codes are another hindrance, with drivers sometimes caught on the wrong side of the law unknowingly. When charged with traffic offences or, more seriously, with false declarations of goods, drivers end up with no legal representation, while in the case of accidents, they have no medical or life insurance cover. The collaborating unions and associations are now lobbying their governments for the standardisation of traffic codes and laws in the region.

Linked to this is the issue of discrimination due to the lack of homogeneous employment policy in the corridor. As Baliraine of Uganda observes, “The only way to tackle unfairness in labour policies is to bring harmonisation and region-wide policy.”

For instance, a trucking company in Uganda might favour Kenyan drivers who offer cheap labour, with average monthly salaries in Kenya around 10,000 Kenyan shillings (or US$138). At the same time some companies in Kenya favour drivers from Tanzania or even Uganda, if they will take lower wages. Foreign drivers from any country in the region can be attractive to employers, as generally they demand lower salaries and may be even less inclined than their domestic peers to complain about working 18 to 20 hours without a rest.

Similarly they may be more likely to accept the new trend among truck owners towards firing turnboys (drivers’ assistants) and leaving drivers to journey alone. Not only does this leave drivers to cope with a two-person job like changing the wheel of the truck, but it increases their vulnerability to attack by thugs, who strike at target points such as bumps and uphill sections of the road in order to plunder containers.

Drivers face particularly severe discrimination in countries other than their own. In the event of accident and even criminal attack, they are commonly expected to pay hefty bribes to escape blame. Unions in the region have also recorded instances where these drivers have died in mysterious circumstances after accidents.

Towards regional protection
In the 1980s the ITF established international drivers’ identification cards to facilitate cooperation between unions wanting to help drivers working away from home, and therefore away from contact with their national union. But the system has largely fallen into disuse due to difficulties over coordination and administration between unions.

A new era of collaboration could offer another chance for identification cards or another mechanism to help drivers get help from unions in the region when they are driving across borders. But this will mean a strengthening of union membership and structures, as well as of coordination with other unions. As Katende says: “For the system to work, drivers must join better organised unions in large numbers.”

In the meantime unions who have signed the memorandum have committed, wherever possible, to assist each others’ members (where they are carrying union or association membership cards) in the case of accidents, harassment and other problems.

The ITF regional office has expressed its determination to offer: “Technical and intellectual support to these unions as they work to unite and take care of these issues.”

Ochieng’ Ogodo is a Nairobi-based journalist specialising in human and labour rights issues.

Section home:
Issue 25 October 2006

Other pages for Tackling intimidation:
Case study: Kenya

Full graphics version

accessibility | site help | site map

The journal of the International Transport Workers' Federation

ITF House, 49-60 Borough Road, London SE1 1DR | +44 20 7403 2733 | mail@itf.org.uk