UAE | General
Sweating it out, sipping tea is all they can do now
Gulf News Deputy Managing Editor Mick O'Reilly spends a day at the Saudi border post of Al Ghuwaifat to find out what stranded truck drivers have on their minds.
- By Mick O'Reilly, Deputy Managing Editor
- Published: 23:04 June 11, 2009
- Image Credit: Ahmed Ramzan/Gulf News
- The drivers all complain that there is reportedly only two Saudi border officials working daily to process identity checks and fingerprinting for the thousands of truck drivers who cross the UAE-Saudi border.
Al Sila: Twenty-eight kilometres near Al Sila, four drivers flagged me down as I drove past an unending column of lorries, all silent and all pointed towards the Saudi border post of Al Ghuwaifat: "Please, you drive, we look for friends," one said as we established English as a form of common language.
Video: Truck drivers voice frustrations
Video: Trucks stranded at border
Read in-depth report on border chaos
I counted more than 300 trucks, during the 2km search for their fellow drivers. The four scanned the lorries, searching out the huddles of drivers drinking chai and seeking shade.
The cabs become ovens in the sweltering heat, instead the drivers eat and sleep on the running boards slung under their trailers. Monir from Peshawar, Pakistan, carries 24 palettes of Harpic toilet cleaner to Doha.
I ask him about smuggling, an activity the Saudi's say is rife among the truckers. He shrugs: "No drugs, just Harpic," he says.
Mohammad, a thick-set Syrian, is carrying bags of animal feed from Dubai to Doha. For each round trip that lasts three days he is paid Dh250. With a family to support Mohammad needs every fils and must make as many trips as possible each month.
On this trip, he left Jebel Ali on Wednesday night. In the last two days he has driven half a kilometre.
"It's no good," he says.
"I cannot do this. What about my wife, my children, my family? At this rate, it will take me two weeks to complete this trip."
The drivers all complain that there is reportedly only two Saudi border officials working daily to process identity checks and fingerprinting for the thousands of truck drivers who cross the UAE-Saudi border.
"How can this be?" asks Khalid, also Syrian, carrying structural steel to Doha, "how can two people process us all, they can only do 500-600 trucks a day and we're left sitting in the sun at the side of the road."
Khalid makes Dh200 for the three-day trip, normally he runs 10 trips per month. He's been stuck on this desolate stretch of highway for the past three days. At this rate he'll be lucky to earn Dh600 in June.
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