Freight car turnaround time had lengthened considerably, and the reported slowness of management to meet growing competition from road transport was also a major factor. A former official in the Sudan train union blamed Gaafar Nimeiry's attempts to crush the unions (who had organised numerous strikes on the railway) by firing 20,000 well qualified employees from 1975-1991.[10] The road system, although generally more expensive, was used increasingly for low-volume, high-value goods because it could deliver more rapidly—2 or 3 days from Port Sudan to Khartoum, compared with 7 or 8 days for express rail freight and up to two weeks for ordinary freight. In 1982, only one to two percent of freight (and passenger) trains arrived on time.[11] The gradual erosion of freight traffic was evident in the drop from more than 3 million tons carried annually at the beginning of the 1970s to about 2 million tons at the end of the decade.