Journalist Yasser Al-Yafei, editor-in-chief of the Yafa News website, said today, Wednesday, that the levies imposed on land transport trucks amounted to more than one million Yemeni riyals per truck.

Al-Yafei published on his page on the

The document included an amount of “three hundred thousand” riyals deducted from one medicine truck, at a security point located at the entrance to the city of Abyan.

Al-Yafei confirmed that the arrival of one truck to the capital, Aden, costs one million and one hundred thousand riyals, to be paid to the security points spread on the lines linking the southern governorates.

He wondered, who is responsible for harassing merchants and destroying the economy? Pointing out what is happening are the practices of (ragging) merchants and businessmen, in addition to exhausting the citizen by paying the added value - with the decline in purchasing power - to the prices of goods and services, and he warned that this will push Merchants go bankrupt and move their commercial activities to other areas, escaping what is happening in Aden at all levels.

He continued, it is important to ask: Do Zanzibar and Abyan in general benefit from these levies? Has there been a realistic change in the city, noting that double amounts are paid by the Unity Cement Factory to the local authority? We are awaiting an answer from the residents of Zanzibar and Jaar.

In conclusion, remaining silent on these actions means wasting sacrifices, and this does not satisfy any rational person.

On February 3, 2022, the well-known Aden newspaper Al-Ayyam said that merchants had filed a complaint with international organizations, including the London Chamber of Commerce, against the security authorities that have checkpoints in the governorates of Aden, Lahj, Abyan, and Al-Dhalea.

Complaints included that merchants were forced to pay illegal protection fees, sometimes at gunpoint, and were not allowed to pass unless they paid money, according to what the newspaper reported.

Aden and Lahj have recently witnessed strikes and abstentions by truck drivers, accompanied from time to time by harsh criticism from activists and media professionals, in protest against the unfair taxes imposed by checkpoints in the aforementioned areas.