MBOMBELA – Legislature has adopted a motion to outlaw the transportation of farm workers on the backs of trucks. In the spirit of Transport Month, Bushbuckridge Residents Association MPL Cleopas Maunye tabled the motion a few weeks ago.
He noted that about 60 farm workers had lost their lives on Mpumalanga’s roads over the past six years because the system treated them as cargo.
“It is the poor drivers who take the responsibility. As a house we must ask ourselves what could have been done to the owner of the truck to get recourse for the lives lost? It is our responsibility to develop legislation that will protect the vulnerable.”
According to the National Road Traffic Act, people may be carried on goods vehicles if the portion in which people are being conveyed, is enclosed at least 35 centimetres above the surface on which the person is sitting, or at least 90 centimetres above the surface on which he/she is standing, and has sufficient strength to prevent him/her from falling while the vehicle is moving. People may also not be conveyed in the goods compartment of a vehicle with any tools or goods except their personal effects – unless the portion is separated from it by a partition.
In the ensuing debate, DA MPL Anthony Benadie said existing legislation had to be enforced. “Workers are the backbone of our economy.”
Community safety, security and liaison MEC, Vusi Shongwe said his department had discussions with the minister of transport to subsidise the introduction of third shifts among provincial traffic officers to increase their presence. “But it will still require drivers to take responsibility in helping to fight road fatalities.”
Shongwe criticised politicising the issue.
“We are dealing with human beings. People sit in legislature and all they do is talk.They talk about accidents as if they are sentimental. There is no sentiment, they are just using it for political ends.”
