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Dumisani Nsingo, Senior Business Reporter
THE National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) will convert some of its divisions into Strategic Business Units (SBUs) as part of its efforts of ensuring effective management and improving its income generation.
NRZ board chairperson Advocate Martin Dinha said the company has managed to weather the storm in the wake of depleted financial resources and a turbulent economy over the years largely due to the ingenuity and unrivalled workmanship of its personnel.
“The NRZ has been very innovative, for the concern not to have collapsed it’s because of the hard work and ingenuity of the people here otherwise it would have gone under. They have gone into Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) and generated income from the resources that are there,” said Adv Dinha.
He said as part of maintaining the company’s going concern plans are underway to turn some of its divisions into strategic units.
“We are now developing other portfolios, which are there like the real estate. We are also developing other strategic business units. We will be going very strategic, through SBUs. For instance this mechanical workshop must not only be able to service our own locomotives but we must create it to be a business that will generate income out of outsourcing labour as well as generating income from training. We are going towards exciting times already, we are negotiating that this becomes a Sadc (Southern Africa Development Community) training centre for all rail men in the region. We will unpack it as we reach there,” Adv Dinha.
A strategic business unit is a profit centre which focuses on product offering and market segment. SBUs typically have a discrete marketing plan, analysis of competition, and marketing campaign, even though they may be part of a larger business entity. He said NRZ remains a strategic national entity which is of paramount importance in resuscitating and transforming the country’s economy.
“At these critical stages, under the new (political) dispensation we have to ensure that NRZ becomes fully functional and gets to 100 percent capacity utilisation. There are issues that have been outstanding in particular to recapitalisation of NRZ. The state of affairs with regards to obsolete and re-tooling of the workshop and legacy debts issues, unpaid wages, pensioners who have not received their monies, which is quite core to my heart because if a person has worked for many years he deserves to look after his or her family as well as himself or herself,” said Adv Dinha.
He further stated that there was a need to expedite the settling of employees’ outstanding salaries. NRZ is still struggling to clear its salary arrears since 2009 when the parastatal started paying its employees. Adv Dinha said the company was in need of about $2 billion to fully recapitalise but has approached the Government for an interim relief of $400 million.
“It would require approximately close to $2 billion to ensure that we come to where we should be, optimally but at the moment we have bid for $400 million to ensure that at least we are able to buy the necessary tools of the trade, equipment and carry on the day-to-day operations but we hope that Government must start ranking NRZ among the priority industries that will turn around the economy not only in Bulawayo where we are headquartered, NRZ spreads around the country, it feeds into every aspect of the economy, agriculture, mining, industry and commerce,” he said.
Adv Dinha said as part of the company’s long-term strategy it was looking forward to putting in place a modern rail system in line with the latest international trends.
“We want to modernise as well . . .we want the modern commuter trains that we see in other countries as we want to assist in the commuter problems that are currently bedevilling the country. We also want to attend to the signalling system. We don’t have a signalling system, which is very important for safety,” he said.
Adv Dinha could, however, not be drawn to comment on the latest development pertaining to the $400 million recapitalisation NRZ and Diaspora Infrastructure Development Group (DIDG)-Transnet Consortium deal signed between the parties last year.
“It’s (NRZ-DIDG/Transnet deal) work in progress at the moment, it’s the last initiative on hand so we are pursuing it with hope that it will bring results,” he said.
@DNsingo
Online Reporter