JUBA-NIMULE HIGHWAY: A killer of its Own Kind
8 min readA road accident victim explaining the ordeals of which he was involved
By KON Joseph LEEK
“I was looking through the window enjoying the green-mountains’ view, then I felt the unnecessary turn, I knew something was wrong. With a break neck speed in the rocky steep and serpentine road with lots of turns, our bus has just overtaken a truck and in a second the driver opened his door wide opened, jumped out and sped in to the bush down the gorge leaving we, the passengers alternating shriek as the next turn approached. The bus overturned, I couldn’t hear anything anymore”.
“The world was now spinning, turned into a small place, quiet and agonizing,” The giant “Baby Coach Bus” has fallen on the right side. I knew straight away that the driver was at fault”.
Lual’thii Deng Lual’cham narrating the ordeals of the bus accident of August 30th, 2014 that killed seven instantly and injuring 19 others
Lual had earlier (about a week) been taken to Juba with all his siblings to attend the burial and funeral of his father 1st. Lt. Deng Lual’cham who was killed in a car accident along the same road on 21st, August
Upon being returned back to Kampala, the bus (baby coach) overturned cutting off his (Lual’s) right hand (a P.7’s candidate- righty is now left with unfamiliar-to-writing-left-hand to do the exams), his uncle’s wife had all the hands cut off and other two sisters of his had one hand cut off from each of them (leaving four people with only three hands).
Yes, there is nothing to smile about, above explained ordeal is not the only accident that happened along that highway but I had to take my time and interview some of the victims after having been discharged from the hospitals and now nursing the wounds.
I wrote nothing about the above accident but forced to write this by the latest accident of 29th September, 2014. It’s heartbreaking to hear more of horrible news. On 29th September, Bakulu bus Reg. No; VAS 073P collided head on with the trailer Reg. No;UAD 304e/UAB 330y (front and near respectively) [all belonging to Uganda citing the registration numbers] around 8:00am just on Nisitu bridge.
Only 17 passengers survived in that bus with life-threatening wounds according to new vision of 30th September.
13 Ugandans (in critical condition) were being attended to in the UPDF field hospital at Nisitu according to the press release of 1st Oct by the Uganda’s ministry of foreign affairs.
That was a calamity to the South Sudanese and their friends, Ugandans
In the above incident, I saw the security personnel disorderly throwing the dead bodies in a black pick-up like logs or sacks of charcoals, even sacks of charcoals are arranged in order to avoid them from breaking. Those security personnel need to be informed about the respect of dead bodies. Taking care of their bodies is the last respect we can do for them.
On 12th Dec, 2013 Lol bus sped at the break-neck speed, the driver failed to control the bus and lastly nocked the tree along the same road killing six and injuring 12 others
Bakulu coach Reg. No; UAQ 409E overturned trying to avoid ramming into a Toyota Ipsum car with Reg. No; EE 516B which was being driven on a wrong lane by another South Sudanese reckless driver just at pageri-Apari junction on 21st December, 2014
On Dec 29th, 2012, Baby and Bakulu coaches collided along the same road near Pageri Revenue Authority killing close to 50 people.
The accident is blamed on the argument that had surfaced between the two drivers in Kampala where the Bakulu bus driver had howl insults on the baby coach driver to be a HIV residue and only awaiting to expire (die). With bitterness, the baby coach driver wanted not to die alone but to die with his tormentor, the Bakulu driver. So the fault of collision was generally blamed on the baby coach driver who committed suicide on the other hence taking the lives of almost 50 other innocent people from Uganda and South Sudan who knew nothing about their argument and no step was taken by the two Countries’ authorities (Uganda & South Sudan) to investigate the incident.
In casethe argument was right and the baby coach driver was indeed a HIV patient then the baby coach passenger company would have been held responsible for the death of all those people for having hired a patient as a driver in their company.
The above accidents plus others I do not know of have happened, people died and no steps were taken.
And most of the accidents are blamed on driver’s reckless driving of which they accelerates as if they just come out of the bar and given a bus to drive citing examples of what you might have read above
Really speaking, If I were the minister of roads, I would deliberately resigned and gave the post back to President Kiir to decides whom to decreed into that post again, because I am doing the unknown to save the lives on that road but since people are not the same where others love to still stand in the face of threat and danger then the minister Is right anyway to motionlessly maintain his place.
What is killing the people on that road is only lack of supervision of one’s role. This is dangerous with us. We take things for granted. If you have done your work, revise what you have done because there are others out there whodestroy what you have done for them, others not respecting it.
There is no way the road is constructed for people and you think your work is over. You still have the burden of enacting laws to guide its use; others abuse what you rightly did for them and for this, you do not need to go and sleep with the mentality that you have constructed what they had wanted.
Yes they might have wanted/needed it but it could be misused unless you guide it. It is not a matter of “road is constructed” and that is it [if you do that, and people dies, the blame still goes back to you].
My people also think that (government too), if the road is nicely constructed, it automatically stops killing people not aware that if your daughter is beautiful and undergoing adolescence period, there are many risks involved. She cangratuitously be defiled or impregnated due to the influence of adolescence when you are busy snoring on your bed thinking that your thing (little daughter) is beautiful and willbe splendidlymarried or awaiting splendid marriage.
That is exactly the same thing our drivers are doing, speeding up due to show-up hence killing us while the government is happily sleeping thinking that its children have been done something nice that they might make use of. Control is important please!
If I was the government, I would use this simple policy along that road as a way to safe guard people’s life along juba-Nimule highway;
The Juba buses that leave for Kampala every morning should be escorted by the traffic police car with its siren from Juba up to Nimule, no bus shall leave alone. They should be waiting and leaves together with the traffic police ahead of them while following it, the speed shall be 70 and below moderated by the traffic police car in another word, they would track at the speed of traffic police.
Upon reaching Nimule, the same traffic police car should be the one leading the Kampala buses from Nimule to Juba at the same speed up to Juba. The siren will help the car/truck ahead to know that something is coming ahead or behind [I could set up the department in-charge of that].
This shall be temporary until the government produces the Traffic Control Devices Manual [First thing first]. Constructions of the roundabouts and street lights is supposed to be after when we are sure that our police for traffic is trained and ready to enact the laws, imagine some of the light-polls along Custom’s road and other streets have been knocked down majorly by the military vehicles in the eyes of the traffic police and no replacement yet, so why do we waste time in doing what is not maintained?
Our traffic police brothers are easily got in any corner of the road seated in groups chatting [majorly women], only stopping alien’s cars and threatening them in close-to-Al-Qaida-Arabic that our brothers from East Afrika [akin to English] do not pick. This is how far unprofessional they have become, looking in their eyes, at how they look at the cars, they seemed to only observe the car that just got involved in the accident and stopping the cars that H.E is soon passing in order to clear the road for him, if there is another you can add…..
I do see the” stopping of buses” from moving along the same road [Kampala to Juba] as not important at all unless we do not mind about the revenue they are providing to the government.
We do not want to die anymore; we know well that many things are killing us here including the infinite 15th December war, poverty, pestilence and City criminals among others
We only write to help inform the government on things it might be forgetting or skipping, we do not write as enemies as others misconstrues the reality..!!
The writer is an independent journalist and a commentator on contemporary South Sudan living In Juba and was in Kampala when he wrote this article. He can be reached on j.konleek@gmail.com +211955091449/+256750000146
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