Ahmed Hussein, head of the refrigerated truck owners syndicate, along with Joseph Aoun, Nawaf Salam, and Nizar Hani, called for immediate intervention to solve the growing problem at the laboratory. They pointed out that the accumulation of trucks has led to the closure of the international road linking Lebanon to Syria.
Hussein indicated that Lebanon receives more than 250 trucks daily from Syria and Iraq. He attributed the cause of this choking crisis to the Ministry of Agriculture’s decision to conduct examinations and analyses on all agricultural products, especially “tomatoes,” where the examination process takes about a week, leading to damage to the goods.
He pointed out that the long waiting period increases the accumulation of samples and raises the number of trucks stopped, warning that this number may rise with the approach of holidays and the ban on trucks traveling on main roads, which may cause long lines and traffic accidents on the “Arab Highway.”
He appealed to the Minister of Agriculture to issue instructions to speed up laboratory analyses immediately, describing the current delay as a real disaster, especially since the laboratory examination in Syria takes only four hours, compared to about seven days in Lebanon.
