EAC to harmonize law on overloading

KAMPALA - Aiming plan that aims to harmonise the law on overloading in the East African Community (EAC) is in the pipeline to ensure all member countries meet the same road standards. According to EAC Deputy Secretary General in charge of infrastructure and planning, Alloys Mutabingwa, this will reduce the rate at which roads are being devastated due to overloading. “We are in the process of harmonizing the road standards across all five countries. It’s then that we shall be able to pass the same message to our transporters and traders who will be able to plan for their businesses in order to cope with demand while taking care of our road networks,” Mutabingwa said. “You find that the standard is not the same, each country still has its own standards. So we are saying they must harmonize and agree on the same standards in the region,” he explained. He noted that some roads are poorly constructed which makes them easily damaged by overloading.He added that it’s the community’s obligation to maintain and standardize regional roads. “It is important that this community considers quality as number one among priorities, we cannot just do window-dressing when we’re dealing with serious matters of long term effect like this.” Mutabingwa further revealed that new technological methods have been invented to detect the strength of roads to meet international levels. “Today, we don’t need people to walk on roads to be able to ascertain whether it’s strong or not, we are introducing new machinery; we just take readings from these machines to detect and I believe that countries will accept to use the same technology to make sure we test the soundness of roads.” Ends