The Sunday Mail
Dumisani Nsingo
Senior Business Reporter
The National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) will convert some of its divisions into Strategic Business Units as part of efforts to ensure effective management and improving income generation, according to board chairman Advocate Martin Dinha.
He said the company has managed to weather the storm in the wake of depleted financial resources and a turbulent economy over the years, largely due to the ingenuity and unrivalled workmanship of its personnel.
“The NRZ management has been very innovative for the concern not to have collapsed because of the hard work and ingenuity of the people here — otherwise it would have gone under. They have gone into Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) and generated income from the resources that are there,” said Adv Dinha.
As part of maintaining the company’s going concern status, plans are underway to turn some of its divisions into strategic business units.
“We are now developing other portfolios, which are there like the real estate. We are also developing other strategic business units. We will be going very strategic, through SBUs. For instance this mechanical workshop, it must not only be able to service our own locomotives, but we must turn it into a business that will generate income through training. We are going towards exciting times already, we are negotiating that this becomes a SADC (Southern Africa Development Community) training centre for all rail men. We will unpack it as we reach there,” Adv Dinha.
In business, a strategic business unit is a profit centre, which focuses on product offering and market segment. SBUs typically have a discrete marketing plan, analysis of competition, and marketing campaign, even though they may be part of a larger business entity.
The NRZ remains a strategic national entity, critical in resuscitating and transforming the country’s economy.
“At these critical stages, under the new (political) dispensation we have to ensure that NRZ becomes fully functional and gets to 100 percent capacity utilisation. There are issues that have been outstanding in particular to recapitalisation of NRZ. The state of affairs with regards to obsolete and re-tooling of the workshop and legacy debts issues, which are very painful of unpaid wages, pensioners who have not received their monies, which is quite core to my heart because if a person has worked for many years he deserves to look after his or her family as well as himself or herself,” said Adv Dinha.
He said that there was a need to expedite the settling of employees’ outstanding salaries.
NRZ is still struggling to clear its salary arrears since 2009.
NRZ was in need of about $2 billion to fully recapitalise but has approached the Government for an interim relief of $400 million.
“It would require approximately close to $2 billion to ensure that we come to where we should be, but at the moment we have bid for $400 million to ensure that at least we are able to buy the necessary tools, equipment and carry on the day to day operations. We hope that Government must start ranking NRZ among the priority industries that will turnaround the economy, not only in Bulawayo our headquarters. NRZ is spread around the country, it feeds into every aspect of the economy, agriculture, mining, industry and commerce,” he said.
Adv Dinha said as part of the company’s long term strategy, it was looking forward to putting in place a modern rail system in line with the latest international trends.
“We want to modernise as well . . . we want the modern commuter trains that we see in other countries as we want to assist in the commuter movement problems. We also want to attend to the signalling system. We don’t have a signalling system and that is very dangerous for safety,” he said.
Adv Dinha could, however, not be drawn into saying much on the latest development pertaining the $400 million recapitalisation NRZ and Diaspora Infrastructure Development Group (DIDG) — Transnet Consortium deal signed last year.
“Its (NRZ-DIDG/Transnet deal) work in progress at the moment. It is the last initiative on hand so we are pursuing it with hope that it will bring results,” he said.
