Tanzania, DR Congo agree to cooperate in railway services

The Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA) and the National Railways Company of Democratic Republic of Congo (SNCC) have agreed to aggressively market their services to increase the volume of freight between the port of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and the DR Congo, a TAZARA senior official said on Friday.

A statement issued by TAZARA Head of Public Relations Conrad Simuchile in Tanzania's commercial capital Dar es Salaam said both TAZARA and SNCC had posted substantive improvements in their performances.

"Transit time between Lubumbashi in DR Congo and Dar es Salaam has been scaled down from over 40 days to less than 10 days in the recent past," said the statement.

It added that TAZARA alone was moving cargo between Dar es Salaam and New Kapiri-Mposhi in Zambia in five days on average.

"With transit times reduced to such low levels, the incidences of theft of cargo have also been eliminated," said the statement.

It said these improvements have come as a result of changes of leadership in both railways as well as measures taken by the shareholding governments to stabilize and boost railway operations by injecting funds and equipment.

Both TAZARA and SNCC expressed regret that despite the abundant volumes of cargo being moved along the Dar es Salaam Transport Corridor covering DR Congo, Tanzania and Zambia, the railways' share of less than 2 percent was unacceptably too low.

The two railways pledged to pool their efforts together in allocating wagons and to address the co-ordination amongst the three railways, including Zambia Railways Limited, said the statement.

TAZARA has been going through turbulent times for many years now, but hit the lowest ebb in the last financial year 2014/2015, when only about 88,000 metric tons of freight were transported, the lowest figure recorded since 1976 when TAZARA operations officially began.

In November last year, TAZARA received four new diesel-electric mainline locomotives and 18 new passenger coaches valued at 22.4 million U.S. dollars.

The new equipment was expected to register a substantial impact on the operations of TAZARA, which has been struggling from diminished capacity due to aged equipment.

Aged between 25-30 years, most mainline locomotives that are currently in operation have outlived their life spans and are frequently breaking down, a situation that has been exacerbated by the authority's failure to adhere to maintenance schedules due liquidity challenges.

Over the years, the passenger service operational levels had dropped drastically to the very minimum, where four trains per week with barely 455,000 passengers were transported in the 2014/2015 financial year, compared to ten years ago when the authority used to run six trains per week and convey more than 900,000 passengers annually.

TAZARA was constructed as a turnkey project between 1970 and 1975 through an interest-free loan of 500 million US dollars from the People's Republic of China, with commercial operations starting in July 1976, covering 1,860 kilometres from Dar es Salaam in Tanzania to New Kapiri Mposhi in Zambia. Endit