•tazara needs is a fresh start anchored on a sound, skilled and well-resourced manpower devoid of patronage.

By DANIEL M’SOKA –

THE marriage between Zambia and Tanzania over Tazara is quickly rolling towards the cliff into derailment.
Like a marriage that has gone sour, the spouses cannot help but tangle over who gets what asset or wields more influence.
When a marriage appears not to be working, partners turn to their counsellors.
These are their trusted representatives who are considered to be experienced, cultured and role models.
Sadly, the Council of ministers and the Tazara board have not been of much help to Tazara.
Like in a marriage, fixing a problem in time  when it rears its ugly head, helps the couple stick together.
A stitch in time, so goes a popular saying, saves nine!
The Tazara board and the Council of Ministers never tried to stitch Tazara problems in time and now they have to deal with nine and more other woes.
Chaotic scenes blight Tazara. For example, industrial unrest now is the norm than an exception.
Unions now have more energy to strike than to work. Wages and salaries are never on time and it takes one to consult a Sangoma to know when the next pay comes up.
Workers even joke that, sometimes, pay day comes quarterly like paying for vehicle road licences.
Besides, Tazara has a runaway debt stock, the kind that vanishes  only when one is buried: $1m for fuel, K12m for retirees and K144m for employee emoluments on the Tanzanian side up to  July,2014.
Add to that money owed to various suppliers.
There are around 22 locomotives among them six new ones but the track is in a state of disrepair and rusty. Besides there are few wagons hence the locomotives are redundant.
As if that is not enough, Tazara has suffered the worst loss of confidence any commercial entity can, perhaps only equated to Malaysia Airways’ recent misfortune.
For example, it had a lucrative haulage contract with KCM, Zambia’s premier copper mine but  was frustrated because of downright inefficiency. The KCM contract worth $10.5m, for example, helped Tazara buy spares and engines from General Electric Company.
How it worked was that KCM split its monthly payments to Tazara in two with the other paid direct to General Electric and this helped the trains to run regularly.
But not anymore!
Another innovation was the full utilisation of the Mpika workshop which is now a sorry site, but by any stretch of imagination, a sleeping giant.
Two years ago, Government pumped in billions of Kwacha into the workshop to recapitalise it. Two years downstream, the equipment has not arrived or perhaps it’s on high seas.
The Mpika workshop is singled out because it generated a lot of income that helped solve much of the financial blues in Tazara.
At its peak the workshop made school desks, mini tractors and mill  balls for the mines. In addition, it was in quarry or crushed stone business and road contractors, interestingly the Chinese, were its clients.
Not anymore! Its demise  has spurred a plethora of mini quarries all over the Northern region which are feeding into the Link Zambia 8000 road project.
Yet this is the money Tazara would have comfortably earned.
But, where is the problem?
The same reason that Zambia Railways Limited (ZRL) went down with, explains Tazara’s down fall.
There are essentially two levels: political patronage and a lack of professional management.
In the case of Tazara, political patronage has been in the form of appointing staff in key positions, such as managing director.
This is Zambia’s preserve but it has not been professionally done because invariably party cadres or people who are politically connected have been favoured.
This in itself has been an affront to Tanzania.
For instance, a few years ago President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania never hid his unhappiness with one of the MDs whom he labeled incompetent.
At another level, recruitment of key staff appears to have been gravely compromised.
You now have some functional managers without the stated requisite qualifications but expected to turn around Tazara. How?
Further, the Tazara board at one time even had the luxury and audacity to appoint one of its members as MD against tenets of good corporate governance.
However, Tazara had in the past, managers that made a difference.
The eras of General Nyirenda and Clement Mwiya stand out.
Tanzanian workers for instance, held Mr Mwiya in such high esteem that they called him “Messiah”.
When he visited work sites workers would even lay chitenge materials as a sign of red carpet welcome for him to walk on.
This is all because salaries and wages were paid on time and there was no “hunger”.
Mr Mwiya inherited six locomotives and then he rehabilitated others to bring the fleet to 18. If this was not a rare management feat, what is it then?
Clearly, Tazara’s down fall is at great cost to Tanzania and Zambia. It also possess serious risks to the warm and brotherly relationship between the two sister countries.
The recent standoff over operations being split is a  bad omen, especially that there is controversy on whether that is the position of the Council of Ministers.
If not well handled, it may affect relations of common people along the border because it will erode the sense of co-existance.
It is important to note that these have been restive places at times because of minor misunderstandings.
In addition, Zambia has greatly lost out because of the huge damage to roads transportation of copper for example, has caused due to the  lack of train service.
Add to that, the fact that the two Governments have to bail out a work force that does not do anything but wait for pay day.
In case of Zambia,again, a vibrant Tazara management would have considered extending the railway to Mpulungu as part of diversification and maximisation of its reach.
In the process, Tazara would have been a catalyst for the development of tourism in the Northern circuit.
Therefore, what Tazara needs is a fresh start anchored on a sound, skilled and well-resourced manpower devoid of patronage.
This means that all top jobs must be advertised. The board needs to be re jigged and the Council of Ministers need to give strategic leadership.
Zambia Railways running on Tazara track to Nakonde or the Mwakembe Shuttle train from Nakonde into Tanzania does not help fix the problems of Tazara.
Instead, the two companies are simply undermining Tazara’s viability and eating into revenues which could help solve some of the problems encountered. Let the two companies lay off their hands and concentrate on fixing their own challenges.
Then with a new Tazara, Zambian workers will not have to accuse their Tanzanian counterparts as thieves of fuel or the Tanzanians calling Zambians wreckers of Tazara and incompetent.
Then Tazara will be a happy marriage once again.