Nairobi — The arrival of huge steel imports at the Mombasa port for Uganda's World Bank-funded hydro power project is posing a huge challenge on how the cargo will be delivered to Uganda without damaging the Kenyan roads.

A vessel carrying the heavy steel metals Jolly Verde arrived in Mombasa port a fortnight ago with hundreds of tonnes of reinforcement steel bars to be used for the construction of the Bujagali Hydro power project. The cargo has already been offloaded but the region's haulage industry is faced with a shortage of special trucks that could transport such loads following the limitation of the number of axles on Kenyan roads to three.

According to the documents seen by Daily Nation, the cargo is being shipped from Metal Market Disticaret limited in Turkey by Salini Construttori SPA based in Jinja Uganda. Another vessel is expected to dock at the port next month with heavy metals and transformers according to a source.

Mustafa Transporters Company based in Mombasa managing director Mustafa Mohamed Issa said that a special truck is between Kshs.7m to Ksh.10m while the ordinary truck with three axle load goes for approximately Ksh.2m. "Transporting a 50 tonne load from Mombasa to Kampala by a special truck would cost about US$10,000 (Ksh750, 000)," he said.

Transporters are now afraid that the corruption at the weighing bridges will allow some of the cargo to go using ordinary trucks. Ideally, the cargo would have been delivered on rail but it is only handling about 5 percent of the cargo from the port.

The special trucks, according to Kenya Transporters Association (KTA) organising secretary Mr Sam Machio, can be used to deliver the cargo without damaging the road because they have multiple axle loads that protect the surface. However, it is only a handful of transporters who have managed to buy them, Machio said.

In October last year, the Kenya government implemented the three axle rule ostensibly barring limits above 48 tonnes on the Kenyan roads. This was part of the government's move to streamline the flow of cargo through the Northern Corridor by making sure that the region's roads network is not damaged by rogue transporters who overload.

KTA chairman Mr Kiprop Bundotich recently said that some transporters were overloading their trucks to make quick profit since they are mostly paid on tonnage. According to Machio most of the steel imports off-loaded last week are coiled and weighed between eight and nine tonnes.

"I am not refuting the fact that there could be other consignments like transformers that were also off loaded but we urge government agencies to be vigilant because the fact is we have 'bad' transporters who would not mind overloading as long as they make money," he added.

A source at the port said that trucks have already started delivering the consignment from the port with abnormal weights of between 70.063 tonnes and 50.058 tonnes.