Truck owners and travellers have expressed serious anger over the continued loss of their drivers, staff and goods as well as the frequent breakdowns of their vehicles on the Calabar-Uyo federal highway.
During an interview with PUNCH Metro in Calabar on Tuesday, the truck owners also lamented the deplorable state of the only link road to neighbouring Akwa Ibom State and the South-East states, expressing worry that the road reconstruction had been at a snail’s pace in over 10 years.
PUNCH Metro recalls that the Minister of Works and Housing, David Umahi, inspected the road about three months ago and assured the public that the contractors would not only return but would also hasten the pace of work, which did not happen.
One of the truck owners, who identified himself as Mr Samson Etete, lamented extensive losses of bags of rice and other edibles when his long truck which conveyed them slipped off and fell into a ditch.
He was sad that insurance covers for the truck had expired a few days before, blaming the bad road and the huge number of other trucks competing for passage on the same bad road.
“This is yet another sad loss for me. A few months ago, another of my trucks had fallen on this same road near the Odukpani area. That one, I did not lose as much as this one. Only the driver was dangerously affected, and the locals had also helped themselves to the spills.
“This latest slip of this truck is such that my goods, the bags of rice and bottles of groundnut oil, all fell into this very deep ravine. The community people have since carted away the bags of rice and the gallons of groundnut oil. How do I recover from these? How do I pull out the truck?”
A truck driver, Edet Uforo, said, “Every day, no fewer than 10 heavy-duty trucks and other types of vehicles break down or fall on the road because of its slippery and uncountable ditches.”
A commuter plying the road for business, Eno Johnson, disclosed that trucks which often fell across the road usually blocked traffic flow resulting in total blockade, such that travellers end up spending longer hours or sleeping on the road with resultant dangers.
