NRZ capacity charms Minister

THE National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) has a potential to become a nucleus for railway engineering and mechanical works in Africa, Minister of Transport and Infrastructural Development, Engineer Joel Biggie Matiza has said.

Speaking soon after a familiarisation tour of NRZ workshops in Bulawayo last week, Eng Matiza said the parastatal has massive infrastructure, which requires recapitalisation to modernise it.

“The purpose of my visit was to familiarise myself with operations at the NRZ. The infrastructure is there and the programmes that they have are quite sound and all they need is a backing of the recapitalisation of their assets,” he said.

“We have a massive infrastructure, which is a marvel and once it is retrofitted to come to a certain level of modernity, I think we can be the regional hub once again and offer services to neighbouring countries and once that is upgraded we can even do for Africa.”

Eng Matiza said he was impressed by the technical staff, which is geared and committed to its work. “It is quite impressive we have people here doing a lot of sophisticated work such as redoing locomotive engines locally and also fabricating certain parts. We have quite a lot of residual technologists who can compete globally despite the fact that some of our people left country,” he said.

NRZ plans to turn around its operations, after years of stagnation, riding on the $400 million recapitalisation from the Diaspora Infrastructure Development Group (DIDG) and Transnet. The recapitalisation project involves renewal of the parastatal’s plant, equipment, rolling stock, track signaling and telecommunications infrastructure as well as information technology systems.

DIDG and Transnet have cobbled up an interim solution by providing 14 locomotives, 200 wagons and 34 passenger coaches. The firm is working on increasing revenue streams by expanding its property portfolio, whose revenues soared to $5,67 million last year from $3,3 million in the prior year.

Eng Matiza said Government will soon start the Harare-Beitbridge-Chirundu highway upgrade project.

“We are starting the Harare-BeitbridgeChirundu highway dualisation soon. We have discussed that and presented it to Cabinet and while negotiations with foreign investors are going on we will start with our local initiative,” he said.

“We are actually going to reduce the scope of works for the external investor. We will start soon using our internal resources as Government,” he said.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa recently announced withdrawal of the tender awarded to Austrian firm, Geiger, for the dualisation project. Geiger won the tender for the highway and commissioned the work in May 2016, but to date the road has remained untouched. — @mashnets