The Sunday Mail
Tendai Chara
The recent deaths of four National Railways of Zimbabwe workers in a rail accident attributed to the public utility’s archaic system is a sad reminder of the dire situation the NRZ has, for a long time, been embedded in.
Two drivers and their assistants died after their goods trains collided head-on near Melfort in Mashonaland East.
The tragedy happened at a time when Ethiopia, until recent years, a country associated with economic strife, is basking in the glory of becoming the first Sub-Saharan African country to introduce a light rail system.
Africa’s only other light rail systems are found in North Africa.
Dubbed the Addis Metro, the urban metro service is set to transform the way people in Ethiopia’s capital commute to work.
A joint venture between Ethiopia and China, the US$475 million Light Rail Project is a perfect example of how the Zimbabwean Government can co-operate with its citizens to come up with a reliable and affordable railway system.
Complete with its own dedicated power grid, the metro service will be able to carry 60 000 passengers per hour when fully operational. Heavily subsidised by Government, fares could range up to six bir (USc27) per ride.
The transport system was built over three years by the China Railway Group Limited after the Ethiopian government secured 85 percent of funding from the Export-Import Bank of China.
Once completed, the rail system will connect with the rest of the country’s national train system and by 2025 it is estimated that more than five thousand kilometres of new rail tracks would have been built across the country.
The system will connect Ethiopia with neighbouring Djibouti, Sudan and Gabon.
As the Ethiopian rail system is making huge strides, the NRZ continues with its long and slow slide into the abyss. Over the years, the NRZ has been plagued by a plethora of problems, chief among them lack of adequate infrastructure, vandalism of property and allegations of corruption against management.
The parastatal’s archaic railway system is operating without a Central Train Control system, which helps to co-ordinate communication and movement.
Zimbabwe is one of the few countries in the region that operates without a CTC and the signals have also been vandalised. Security has been a concern at NRZ were its huge tracks remain largely unguarded.
Calls have been made for Government to introduce laws that will severely punish those that vandalise railway tracks.
NRZ offers one of the most unreliable services in the Southern Africa region and the dilapidated state of the trains and the old locomotives has, for a long time, been a cause of concern. The workers have not received their salaries during the past 13 months and the public utility is still without a substantive head. Workers have often accused management of furthering their interests at their expense.
In 2009, the workers confronted management after the company acquired top-of-the-range vehicles worth $1 million at a time when the public utility was failing to pay its workers. Instead of fulfilling its mandate to provide a cheap and reliable rail service, the NRZ has hopped from one scandal to another.
Dr Obert Mpofu, the Minister of Transport and Infrastructural Development, recently hinted that the challenges that the NRZ is facing will not be solved any time soon.
“The ultimate solution lies with getting an investor to capitalise and rehabilitate NRZ, which is what Government is working on now. We have been engaging a number of serious investors that are interested such as Chinese companies and the Development Bank of Southern Africa, but this is a process. We can’t get an investor today and things start moving tomorrow,” Dr Mpofu said.
He was speaking at a Press conference after officially opening the 7th African Transport Technology Transfer Conference early this year.
According to Dr Mpofu, Government is working on fixing railway structures as stated in the National Transport Master Plan. Calls have been made for Government to put as much effort in revamping the rail system as it is doing to revamp the road network.
Lives have been lost as a result of the archaic rail system. In 2003, over 40 passengers were killed after their coach and a goods train collided head-on in Dete near Hwange. Again in 2006, a passenger was killed and six others injured when two trains collided at Ngungumbane near Chiredzi.
The NRZ is, however, not the only struggling public utility in the Southern African region. The Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) incurred a R1b loss for the 2014/2015 financial year, a factor which was attributed to the country’s archaic rail system.
