Saudi Border

Todays Zaman, Turkey: Held up by rigorous customs procedures at the Saudi Arabian-UAE border, hundreds of Turkish trucks have joined in long queues waiting at the Al-Ghuwaifat border gate to enter Saudi Arabrabia

One of the biggest problems the truck drivers face is the hot weather, exceeding 50 degrees Centigrade and above seasonal norms. By last week, trucks in the queue numbered in the thousands.

The delays at the border have reportedly been happening for the past month; it is taking drivers up to 16 hours to move just two kilometers. Many say they have almost run out of food and drink and that they are finding it difficult to stand the heat.

Hüseyin Bezgin, one of the stranded Turkish drivers, spoke to the Cihan news agency by phone and said he has been waiting in the queue for the past four days; conditions are harsh and the authorities have declined to offer them accommodation. He said some of the trucks are carrying tons of food which is now in danger of spoiling. “The governments of both Turkey and Saudi Arabia should sit down to resolve the issue; otherwise, we will lose out here,” he said.

However, the officials at the gate suggest that the problem has arisen not because any sanctions have been imposed on the trucks but because the Turkish drivers fail to produce the necessary paperwork to cross the border. Some of the trucks have been sent back by Saudi officials who say they are carrying more cargo than their documents indicate. The officials have also explained that the delays have been due to some extra measures taken recently to avoid drug smuggling. The Saudis have recently confiscated some 5.5 million Captagon tablets at the border and have established a joint committee with the UAE to counteract smuggling. The officials have made it obligatory to take fingerprints from each truck driver.

Saudi officials say they expect to increase the capacity of the Al Batha border gate to handle more trucks but that this can only start after the holy month of Ramadan, which starts during the last week of August. Official figures show that some 900,000 trucks passed through the Al Batha border gate in 2007, while this number reached 1 million in 2008. The trade volume between the UAE and Saudi Arabia skyrocketed to $15 billion in 2008 from $1.3 billion in 2007. The trucks transport a wide range of goods from food, textiles and leather to electronics and motor vehicles between the two countries.

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