The National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ), battling a myriad of challenges, which are threatening its recovery, is in a sorry state, newly appointed Transport and Infrastructural Development Minister, Felix Mhona, has said.
Responding to questions from legislators in Parliament Wednesday on the government’s policy towards reintroduction of electric trains and locomotives, Mhona disclosed the parastatal was in a very bad state.
“The situation at NRZ is a sorry state,” said Mhona.
“I want to think If you remember very well, we had the Harare/Dabuka electrified line which is about 313km decommissioned and not only that, we also had the automatic signalling coming to 1580km that has also been decommissioned.”
Further explaining what the government would do about the situation at the parastatal, Mhona said: “If you go to Vision 2030 it has got five pillars and I will hinge on a particular pillar which is infrastructure and utilities. Under that cluster, there is the idea of infrastructure support in tandem with NDS1 (National Development Strategy 1) so that we resuscitate in particular NRZ through the rail system in Zimbabwe. It talks of other infrastructure programmes but I will zero in on the NRZ which has resulted in the decline of business of NRZ through vandalism that we have witnessed due to obsolete equipment.”
Mhona asked the August House to come up with punitive measures to curb the vandalism of the railway infrastructure.
