Issayas Mekuria
Addis Fortune
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
The Djibouti Trucks Terminal was built by the China Jiangsu International Economic Technical Cooperation Corporation and began operations last year. But because the compound has not been properly surfaced, the facility's ground was quickly damaged by trucks entering and exiting making it near impossible for operations to continue.
The soil is so fine that any heavy truck that tries to enter the terminal ends up with half its tyres buried in the dust," a truck driver told Fortune. "Nobody wants to even park there."
The terminal was built in an attempt by the Djiboutian Government to avoid traffic jams caused by the Ethiopian transport trucks. At the same time, transporters had appealed to the Ethiopian government to find a solution to the traffic problem as they were being fined by Djibouti policemen for parking illegally in the port city.
As a solution, both countries signed an agreement on July 25, 2002. The Djiboutian governments agreed to allocate 164,238sqm of land for free, located 12Km from the city, for 25 years where Ethiopia agreed to build a truck terminal.
The responsibility of building and managing the construction of the terminal was given to the FTA, which issued a tender and contracted the Chinese Company. The building of the compound includes nine restrooms, nine shower rooms, a meeting hall, a warehouse and a radio operating office.
"Because Djibouti does not have much rainfall during the year, we believed that we would not be faced with problems concerning mud, so we did not asphalt the compound," said Belayneh HabteGebriel, head of public relations department at FTA, told Fortune. "Now that the soil issue has arisen, we have allocated an over six million Birr budget for the project."
The project will involve clearing the compound of soil and packing gravel into it. The FTA also plans to build an additional 14 restrooms and shower rooms.
At peak shipping times, the terminal was hosting 250 trucks at a time, but usually no more than 100 truck use the facility at once.
The FTA has again contracted the same Chinese Company without issuing a tender. Information from the Authority shows that the Company is expected to finalize all constructions in one year's time.
"One of the problems at the truck terminal was the number of restrooms and shower rooms. The fact that they are building more is of great joy to us," said Teum Haylay, an Ethiopian truck driver.
The Authority has decided that it will hire a management team to specifically oversee the running of the terminal. Expenses for the terminal, the Authority said, would also be covered by freight truck owners associations. There are over 300 such organisations in the country.
Source: Addis Fortune, Nov. 1, 2006