Residents want logging trucks restricted

Residents of Bong County along the Lofa Highway are pleading with the 54th Liberian Legislature to put in place regulatory mandate that will deny the movement of logging trucks in the day.

“Logging trucks moving in the day while pedestrians are along the road is very dangerous and this government must see reason to put stop to them,” Alfred Winston, a resident along the Lofa Road has told our Bong County Correspondent.

The residents are complaining that the movement of logging trucks in the day poses a serious risk to their lives, stressing that government needs to regulate their movement.

It is not clear as to which logging company is operating in the region, but locals say logging trucks usually come from Lofa and pass through Gbarnga and Kokoyah statutory District to Buchanan, Grand Bassa County.

Our correspondent says in January this year, one of the logging trucks killed a motorcyclist in Kokoyah, a situation that is said to have prompted citizens’ concern.

Some citizens are suggesting that if logging companies should operate in Liberia freely, the rights of citizens must be respected, rather than at the detriment of locals.

There are claims that 75 percent of the truck drivers in the area are said to be hired from Guinea, with allegations that the drivers do not care about the lives of locals.

Logging truck drivers are said to disregard traffic regulations in the area, with locals claiming that trucks operators move on the road as if they were in competition.

But a chief driver for a company in the area Mr. Alassane Aleu Sesay has denied the allegation. Liberians in the area have argued that it is the responsibility of every good government to ensure that the lives of its citizens are saved.

They add that if the government doesn’t see reasons to intervene, they will take another stance that might lead to the standstill of the company’s operations.

By Joseph Titus Yekeryan in Bong–Edited by Winston W. Parley