Token payments of between Tsh100,000 ($100) and Tsh500,000 ($ 500) are being proposed for victims of the Dodoma train crash in Tanzania, in which up to 200 passengers died three weeks ago.

However, the Tanzania Relief Co-ordination Committee in the Prime Minister's Office has yet to come up with confirmed figures or the methodology to effect the payments.

Tanzanian law does not provide for any form of compensation for injury or loss of life occasioned by trains or marine vessels run by the Tanzania Railway Corporation. But the government has contributed Tsh200 million ($210,526) to be paid as kifuta machozi (consolation) to victims of the train accident.

The proposed Tsh500,000 for those who died and Tsh100,000 for the survivors are not the final figures, said an official of the relief committee, adding that the proposal would have to be discussed by Permanent Secretaries.

Asked how much the committee had received from well-wishers, the official said it was too early to give the exact figure, "because more people and organisations are still making contributions, but once this is ready, we will let the public know."

Eighty-eight of the passengers who died in the accident on June 24 were buried by the government in Dodoma town because they could not be identified.

Bodies of the other 95 were collected by relatives for burial in different parts of the country.

The train, which was said to have been carrying 1,200 passengers, rolled back 44 km down a hill and crashed into a goods train.

However, the task of compensating the victims may be as difficult as that faced by another committee in 1996 following the sinking of mv Bukoba in Lake Victoria in which more than 500 people died.

"We will have to verify the claimants," said the official, adding: "In the case of the 88, buried in Dodoma, we trust that a probe committee formed under Judge January Msoffe will come to our rescue on this after presentation of its final report to the government."

The report will help come up with the right methodology to pay out the consolation money. The committee is expected to hand in its report in two months' time.

As with the mv Bukoba tragedy, there are fears that impostors might claim to have lost relatives in the tragedy.

"We will have to be very careful this time around, taking into consideration the experiences of the mv Bukoba accident," the official said. There are claims that some of the people who were supposed to receive consolation money in the mv Bukoba tragedy have not been paid to-date.

Most of the recommendations made by a probe committee after the Bukoba sinking have not been implemented.

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