The Copperbelt’s most important border has been flagged for another scam aimed at fleecing truck drivers – a $5 membership fee for the SADC Truck Drivers Association.
The receipt has all the signs of authenticity – a logo proclaiming that it is issued by ‘ITM Border Services’ and notification that it’s a “payment note for truck drivers association fee” (sic).
Without it, since Monday drivers have been disallowed entry into the Democratic Republic of the Congo at Kasumbalesa, the primary crossing for cross-border transporters serving copper mines in the Lubumbashi and Kolwezi region.
Approached by industry to assist drivers stuck on Zambia’s side of the border, Mike Fitzmaurice, who heads up the Transit Assistance Bureau (Transist), said there was no organisation such as the one drivers were now supposed to pay for.
He said it was “absolute nonsense” and had been confirmed as such by the Southern African Development Community.
Apparently the ‘new system’ is headed up by a person called Fiston M (full surname withheld), who had identified himself as president of ‘The Runners Association’ – itself by all accounts a bogus body, Fitzmaurice said.
He said although drivers needed runners to handle their border clearance documentation while they waited in the northbound queue, more often than not a mess of tangled congestion, drivers should not feel forced to belong to any organisation.
“It’s against international law. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights enshrines freedom of association, stating that ‘No one may be compelled to belong to an association’.”
Fitzmaurice, who also serves as vice president of the Union Africaine des Organisations de Transport et de la Logistique (UAOTL), said he was in the process of writing to Jean-Pierre Bemba, Deputy Prime Minister of the DRC, and the country’s Minister of Transport and Channels of Communication.
The matter has already been reported to the DRC’s multi-modal freight agency, Office de Gestion du Fret Multimodal, but an official apparently said drivers must carry on paying while Ogefrem investigates.
“That’s absurd,” Fitzmaurice said. “It’s illegal and should be stopped immediately. There’s nothing to investigate. SADC has confirmed that the organisation drivers are supposed to be members of doesn’t exist.”
He said Transist could also confirm that drivers would have to pay the fee each time they entered the DRC.
He said the Bureau’s members had been told to advise their drivers not to pay, because “it’s extortion, plain and simple, which is a criminal offence, unless extortion and fraud are legal in DRC”.
It’s not the first time that long-distance drivers on the Copperbelt route have been exploited in an environment that is notoriously dangerous and beset by all manner of logistical snags – from infrastructural hold-ups to poor service delivery, made worse by being a breeding ground for corruption and attendant criminality.
Not long ago a similar scam briefly flourished in Zambia when a person called Steven Zungu persuaded drivers that he represented a mandatory association that protected the rights and safety of over-border drivers.
Prevarication on the part of public-sector officials, much like the Ogefrem official, allowed Zungu to ply his trade of ill-gotten gains before exposure finally made him disappear.
The receipt in full, issued to a driver employed by a member of Transist.
