Established 1930 NRZ revival good omen for economy

THE story of the country’s second largest city, Bulawayo cannot be told in full without dedicating acres of space to the transport company, the National Railways of Zimbabwe.

In fact, Bulawayo owes its crown as the melting pot of arts and culture in the country because it is home to NRZ, which was at the core of the country’s economic activity back then and attracted workers from all corners of the world.

The company, one of the largest in the country, was to make serious investments and became the biggest employer outside Government, with stations and offices across the country.

In Bulawayo, it also invested heavily in housing, with a number of suburbs predominately occupied by people who worked for the company, and the story is the same in major towns and cities.

NRZ was the employer of choice back then — no doubt about that. And that glory can still be revived, thanks to stern measures being taken by Government led by President Mnangagwa to revive the economy. President Mnangagwa has since coming into power late last year introduced a range of measures to boost the country’s dwindling exports, fight corruption and cushion the local manufacturing sector.

Apart from re-engaging the international community and calling upon Zimbabweans based abroad to play their part in the country’s economic revival, he has also made his wish known— jobs, jobs, jobs.

The President has set in motion systems to revive the country’s industries, attract local and foreign investment to create employment and the commissioning of wagons, locomotives and coaches at the NRZ last week was indeed a bold statement that better times are beckoning.

The NRZ had become one of the worst performing parastatals, but that will soon be a thing of the past with the machinery that has been given to the company, thanks to a partnership with the Diaspora Infrastructure Development Group (DIDG) and a South African company, Transnet.

NRZ board chairman Mr Larry Mavhima said the company will never be same again.

“Our once proud NRZ had been reduced to a pale shadow of its former self. We no longer lived up to our motto, ‘We move the nation’, which was really worrying. Last year we began our first step in the recapitalisation project of our railways through the invitation of partners to work with on this massive project. We are happy that we are eventually witnessing the fruition of our dreams. We are showing all that we took heed of the President’s remarks that Zimbabwe is now open for business. Today we announce that we cease to become a problem child as we will be moving the nation to a brighter future.”

NRZ Manager Engineer, Lewis Mukwada, said their vision was to restore the capacity of the railway company.

“To us today marks another milestone in our journey to revive our country’s railway infrastructure. Our vision is to restore the capacity in which our railways was associated with back in the day.

This equipment is to close the gap while we continue negotiations so that we get financial closure as we realised we were losing business as negotiations continued.

Part of these trains will target our chrome market where we expect a net profit of $1.1 million monthly after payment of our lease fee. This is a very significant step as we were failing to meet our targets but we will now manage to get the foreign currency we were losing because of our capacity constraints.”

We urge the NRZ management not to take the eye off the ball, and keep the fire burning.