Overloading ban: K-P enforces weight limit on trucks

PESHAWAR: The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government has decided to enforce the load limit on trucks plying on the highways in the province. Overloading on provincial highways will be considered Illegal, officials said.

According to the law, every load carrying vehicle can take only a permissible amount of load of up to 58 tonnes on provincial highways.

The K-P government has already amended Motor Vehicle Rules 1969 in the year 2014 and issued a new schedule for controlling the menace of overloading introduced. This schedule empowers the government to charge fine and even to impound the overloaded vehicle.

The details of permissible load limit for different type of vehicle exist in the form of sign boards on all provincial highways. The same law has been implemented on National Highways by National Highways Authority (NHA) which helps them in keeping national highways sustained and safe from any sort of dilapidation.

Pakhtunkhwa Highways Authority (PKHA) installed a weigh machine on Malang Baba – Nizampur Road to monitor the load limit for different vehicles and the exercise revealed that the vehicles used for carrying building crushing material to other districts are carrying loads manifolds of their permissible weight limit which is totally illegal.

Pakhtunkhwa Highways Authority has initiated this crackdown operation in collaboration with district administration, however, different heavy goods transporters tried to malign the activity performed by PKHA.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 23^rd, 2018.