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Oliver Kazunga Senior Business Reporter—
NEW National Railways of Zimbabwe board chairman Alvord Mabena says the revival of the entity requires the collective effort of all sectors of the economy. Mabena, a former NRZ general manager, a fortnight ago bounced back after 15 years of absence at the railway company. He retired in 1999 having served for 20 years. Mabena joined the NRZ in 1980 as a mechanical engineer and was appointed general manager 10 years later.
For more than a decade, NRZ has been underperforming owing to a number of challenges that bedevilled the economy in recent years.
Undercapitalisation, antiquated equipment, and a skills flight among others have crippled operations at the state-owned rail firm.
Last year, the government said the recapitalisation of the parastatal would be undertaken in two phases: $450 million in the short-term and $2 billion in the long-term.
“For the railways to be up and running again everything else that deals with it must breathe, that is to say for railways to carry people those people must have money in their pockets to pay for the service,” said Mabena in a wide ranging interview.
“For the railways to service industry and commerce it must be breathing. In summary it means the economy as a whole must be breathing as this is where the revenue comes from.
“We’ve got an idea of what is required and what is important is that everybody has to come to the party. Internally, the prerequisite of any success is to ensure that the human resource is capacitated to ensure that we have the right resources at the right place doing the right things.
“The railways industry requires heavy investments and the lead times can be long; it is important therefore to guard against expecting instant results. From what I know most of rail infrastructure at NRZ now is near dysfunctional, the rolling stock also dysfunctional let alone the right culture of running a business.”
Mabena said the issue of dealing with a bad work culture could take a lot of their time in trying to turn around fortunes at NRZ but was optimistic that no matter how big an assignment, if a collective approach is adopted, turning around the railways was possible.
“Money and resources is the easy part but human capital is the most complex of them all. We don’t want to reinvent the wheel.
“We’re aware that there is some attempt being made to revive the railways, obviously we have to take that into consideration and build from there.”
He said their role as a board was to give the necessary direction, pace and attitude towards a new NRZ.
Over the years, Mabena said, Zimbabwe’s rail-based industries have transformed in terms of technology.
“We will have to do a lot of system re-engineering to bring it in line with modern rail systems and best practices. We will need to benchmark the railways of today and clarify what exists across the board and I will need to tap extensively from rail management,” he said.
Online Reporter