Government urged to help resuscitate National Railways of Zimbabwe

GOVERNMENT has been urged to help speed up the resuscitation of the National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) for the parastatal to provide logistical solutions that are critical to the country’s development agenda.

The Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Transport and Infrastructure Development that toured NRZ properties in Bulawayo, Dete, Hwange and Victoria Falls noted with concern, especially the state of the Bulawayo-Victoria Falls highway which is heavily damaged by haulage trucks carrying coal from Hwange.

The committee chairperson Knowledge Kaitano, who is Mudzi West Constituency Member of Parliament said Parliament will interrogate why coal miners are opting for road transport instead of rail transport even though NRZ was offering competitive terms.

Cde Kaitano said they were impressed by the fact that NRZ has experts in its workshops, the worrisome factor was obsolete technology used by the parastatal.
“We have been touring properties and activities of NRZ and what we have seen is quite eye-opening as it is like a very important business unit. What is critical for NRZ is for them to be capitalised and modernised.

“In Hwange, we realised that NRZ has not been favoured by the coal miners who use their own transport to carry coal even though NRZ has offered much cheaper rates. This has become so worrisome because these vehicles have damaged the Bulawayo-Victoria Falls Road, it’s in bad shape.

Our roads will not survive as the trucks are damaging the road and the cost to Zimbabwe is not just forfeiture of business by NRZ but also destruction of our road network. That has become worrisome, it’s something that we need to look into as legislators,” said Cde Kaitano.

He said Parliament had closely looked at NRZ’s market competitiveness and is convinced the parastatal is competitive.
“We are going to interrogate this further to see where the bottlenecks are and why transporters are opting to destroy our roads,” he said.

The committee chair said everyone must help NRZ address its challenges.
NRZ board chairperson Advocate Mike Madiro said the state entity was critical on the logistics side as the Government implements the National Development Strategy 1 towards an Upper Middle Income Society by 2030.

He said Parliament has an oversight role over Government and public service.
“We have challenges and there is no doubt about that. We need to provide logistics solutions to the country’s agenda. Logistics is key to the Government agenda and NRZ is important to achieve that agenda.

“Stabilisation of price regime is one of the key objectives of Government and to achieve that logistical solutions, competitiveness and efficiency are key to it. And railway makes logistics one of the key mandates. We need to impress upon Treasury and shareholders that we need resource intervention,” said Adv Madiro.

He said NRZ is a sleeping giant and there is evidence on the ground that the parastatal can provide logistical solutions to the country’s needs.
He said the tour was organised to ensure Parliament plays its oversight role to help NRZ return to its mandate to provide freight and passenger services.

“Within that mix, we cannot supervise ourselves, so Members of Parliament, on behalf of the people of Zimbabwe had to come in to have that oversight role to see whether we are discharging our mandate.

“The committee was here to experience first-hand and appreciate the challenges and help to ameliorate that to meet objectives. They are seeing the gaps which we need to fill and we are happy that they are also realising that we are doing a great job,” he said.
NRZ general manager Ms Respina Zinyanduko said the state entity had embarked on an exercise to identify and evaluate its assets countrywide to realise value from them.-chroncile