THE POST
ZAMBIA'S LEADING
INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
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No. 514, TUESDAY EDITION, JULY 16, 1996
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Many lives depend on troubled Tazara
By Joe Chilaizya
FEW Tanzanian or
Zambian officials are likely to have heard of Chozi, Idiga or
Vwawa. Fewer still would be aware that should their governments
close the railway line operated by the troubled Tanzania-Zambia
Railway Authority (TAZARA), most activity in those small, remote
stations would grind to a halt. The TAZARA railway is a lifeline
to villagers living along its route. When they hear the train
coming, people bearing baskets full of red onions, potatoes,
rice, bananas, tomatoes, plantains and oranges rush to meet it.
They live for those ten minutes during which the train stops
alongside the drab white station to change tracks or locomotives
on its three-day journey between Dar -es -salaam in Tanzania and
the Zambia town of New Kapiri Mposhi. A few are men, but most are
barefooted women with babies strapped on their backs and heavy
bags or baskets of produce on their heads.
"I've got to sell as much as I can, which normally is not
much or anything at all because the train stops for just a few
minutes," said one woman in the Zambian village of Chozi
"Usually, we sell our produce very cheaply because there is
too much competition among ourselves and those of us who are more
desperate for cash end up lowering prices for everybody,"
Amina said. "You wouldn't sell much if you raised your
prices above everybody else's." But, unknown to Amina and
her counterparts in Tanzanian villages such as Vwawa and Idiga,
TAZARA is finding it difficult to keep afloat.
The railway was Zambia's answer to the closure of its routes to
Southern African ports as a result of Rhodesia's Unilateral
Declaration of Independence (UDI) in 1965. With help from the
Chinese government, the 1,860km line was constructed in the
mid-1970s in partnership with the Tanzanian government at a cost
of 23 million US dollars.
Initially, it was meant to handle all of landlocked Zambia's
freight, and it did. But since the re-opening of the southern
routes following independence in Mozambique in 1975 and the
coming of majority rule in Zimbabwe in 1980, Zambia's dependency
on Dar- es-Salaam port has lessened. As a result, the volume of
cargo along the railway has been considerably reduced - total
freight decreased from over a million tonnes in 1992 to about
643,000 tonnes in 1994 - and with it TAZARA's earnings. This has
forced the two governments to take a new look at its operations.
Zambian Transport and Communications Deputy Minister Gilbert
Mululu told IPS recently that TAZARA needed to address its
colossal overheads, of which the biggest is salaries. The railway
authority itself says it cannot continue to employ some 6,000
Zambians and Tanzanians who work for it and Roughly 4,000 will
therefore be laid off in a planned restructuring of the company,
leaving just about 2,000 on its payroll.
Travelling on the railway, it is hard to imagine it is not doing
well. It's passenger trains, built to carry 600-plus people, are
almost always full to capacity, with little or no standing room
left at all. Each passenger pays between 26 and 46 US dollars for
a ride between Dar es Salaam and New Kapiri Mposhi, but most
board the train at one of the several small stations. For people
living along the route, the train is the cheapest and most
convenient link to the rest of Zambia or Tanzania. The
third-class carriages are usually so full that many commuters
spill over into the second and first class corridors. For those
who can afford to pay for first class, it is a luxurious ride in
great comfort along scenic landscapes. TAZARA's attractions
include a tourist detour to the hot springs of Shiwang'andu and a
tour of the 18th century castle there. However, most of the
people who use the line do so out of sheer necessity. They would
suffer greatly should the service be stopped, although the two
governments seem unlikely to take such a step.
There had been talk that the Zambian government had lost interest
in TAZARA, but it recently reiterated its commitment to the
railway. According to sources at the TAZARA office in Dar
-es-Salaam, there are plans to privatise the company. They said
both governments will put most of their shares up for sale to
their respective citizens and the rest will be sold to outside
investors. "Rumour has it that a South African company has
expressed interest in investing in the railway line, but it is
all just speculation,'' one source told IPS.
IPSMISANET
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