30 July 2007
Maputo — The railway companies of Mozambique, South Africa, and Swaziland have signed an agreement on the exchange and training of their crews as part of an operational partnership that also calls for the repair of engines and wagons in any of the three countries, with international quality standards.
Under the agreement, Mozambican train drivers have started operating with Swazi and South African engines, and operation manuals are being translated to be used in future training programmes in the three countries.
Cited in Monday's issue of the Maputo daily "Noticias", the executive director of the southern branch of the Mozambican railway company (CFM-Sul), Joaquim Zucule, said that this partnership comes within the context of the regional integration of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
He added that the idea is to create conditions for any of the three companies to be prepared to offer high quality services by 2009, and respond to the expected growth of demand in terms of freight transport in the near future.
Though admitting that there has also been a high demand for international rail passenger services, Zucule said that CFM's priority for passenger transport remains domestic. In the south it is to develop passenger traffic in the Maputo-Matola connurbation and, when the carriages are available, extend the services to Moamba, and to Ressano Garcia, on the south African border.
He said that at regional level, the priority is to take advantage of the expected increased demand during the football World Cup to be held in South Africa in 2010. The plan is to put a train for tourists ciculating between the various countries of the region in this period.
Commenting on the traffic in the southern region's railway system, Zucule said that the Limpopo line, linking Maputo to Zimbabwe, which was rehabilitated recently, has been operating below its capacity because of the collapse of the Zimbabwean economy.
Thus in the first six months of 2007, the Limpopo Line only handled 263,000 tonnes of cargo. Although this is an increase on the same period in 2006, it is still well below expectations.
"Now we are operating with just one train a day on the Limpopo line, compared with the fixed capacity of five, and the line is handling about 600,000 tonnes of cargo a year", he said.
"But we expect that in future the figure will each a million tonnes". He based this optimism on Zimbabwean imports of fertiliser, and supposed this was the precursor to a resumption of large scale Zimbabwean expoerts of agricultural produce via Maputo.
As for the Goba line, which runs from Maputo to Swaziland, Zucule said it is expected that the volume of freight carried by this line will double from current 100,000 tonnes a year, to 200,000 tonnes. This is in addition to the 50 containers of pulp and 10,000 tonnes of cement a month that Swaziland imports.
As for the line to South Africa, Zucule said that there have been signs of increase of traffic to Maputo, with about 32 trains a week, which is somewhat below the target of 35 trains a week.
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