THE news beat is along Nakonde road in front of a popular eating place dubbed as 'Welcome to Twafiiq' and perched right in the face of Chitulika Village in Mpika District. Nakonde Road is teeming with trucks and trailers which have reduced the road to a single lane. The trucks, laden with copper, inflammable liquids and other goods, are in transit to Tanzania and the Southern parts of Zambia.
Welcome to Twafiiq,is a high profile attraction spot for Tanzanian nationals which is owned by a Somalian. It is exactly After the response from the man on other end of the line, Mr Kampyongo beckons to the news crew from Times of Zambia, Zambia News Information. In a convoy, we drove along Nakonde Road and stopped right in front of the infamous Welcome to Twafiiq where several trucks had filed along the road. Besides a truck and trailer with Tanzanian registeration number T BKR, we find a young man siphoning diesel from a truck into a litre container.
Within 20 minutes, a combined team of four police officers and a Mpika District Council officials arrive at the crime scene. They team up before Mr Kampyongo briefly expresses disappointment at the rather absurd state of affairs caused by the heavy presence of trucks. The task was simple and Mr Kampyongo firmly informed the policemen from Mpika Police Station that the only option was to clear all trucks from the road. After the instruction, the officers frantically act.
Detective Sergeant Kelvin Silombwana explodes as he saunters to one truck driver, recoiling in Swahili language with a sense of authority: Detective Sergeant Silombwana then turns to another driver on the opposite and shouts: The other officers are also busy following behind with an armed police man issuing final warning that the drivers should start the trucks and disappear in the cloud of the night.
This is wrong parking," said one officer, almost in a tone marred with a sense of self-defeat. As we move along Nakonde Road, we come across a truck crew that had placed a brazier on a tail panel of a truck registration number T30 BZP while another group was preparing meals under a trailer number T AXB towed by a Mitsubishi Fuso horse. Never mind that the cooking is taking place only few metres away from tankers carrying inflammables which could explode anytime if something went wrong.
