Khyber
Volunteers of transport union has started fleecing drivers at Pak-Afghan road with their both hands, truckers said.
They said that besides having legal documents, they were forced to pay one thousand rupees as transport union fee, collected by its workers, deployed at various points at Pak-Afghan highway, Landi Kotal.
Abdullah, an Afghan national driver said on Saturday that the union persons were made them to wait in long queues for days that posed threat to their vehicles and loaded trading commodities.
We transport transit goods and exempt of strict examination at Torkham border but wait at long lines for hours and sometimes days to cross the border to Afghanistan.
Despite of space, available in parking lots in the under- construction terminal in Torkham, the transport union compelled them to park their vehicles in the open ground of Hamza Baba without access to basic facilities, he added.
Another driver, Asad Khan said that establishing of parking at the deserted area, oblige them on starvation and no access to facilities beside they were paying one thousand rupees per vehicle to the union.
They demanded of the authorities concern to take forthwith action against those, collecting illegal money from them and deploy highway traffic police at Pak-Afghan road to regularize traffic on the road.
The transport union persons said that five transport unions in Khyber and Peshawar had made a consortium to facilitate the truckers.
They had hired services of volunteers to regularize the trucks movement at the Pak-Afghan highway.
They also blamed that 20 % money of the collection disbuted among the trnasport union officer beaers and to meet their expenses and to pay the workers and the rest of 80 % money were given away to the various officials.
On the viral of corruption news at social media, the district administration took notice of it and arrested the union persons however, they were released after few hours that put question mark at the role of the administration, locals said.
The Deputy Commissioner and other concern officials were repeatedly contacted on his WhatsApp number for his version on the matter but failed to receive his respond.
