Maputo — The ferry service across the Zambezi river, linking the central Mozambican provinces of Sofala and Zambezia, has been normalised, reports Monday's issue of the Beira daily paper "Diario de Mocambique".
The low level of water in the river had hindered the aged ferry from making its normal trips between Caia on the south bank and Chimaura on the north bank. A queue of trucks built up at Caia, carrying goods from Beira companies, to supply the north of the country during the festive season.
The level of the Zambezi at Caia began to rise on Thursday, and reached three metres on Friday, enabling normal ferry service to resume.
But by then, truck drivers were almost coming to blows, in disputes over who should be first to cross the river, with each of them arguing that his cargo was more perishable than that in the next truck. Police had to be dispatched to the queue to keep order. (The problem is that, even when it is operating normally, the ferry can only take one large truck at a time, and it makes ten round trips a day.) To improve matters, the ferry crew were ordered to be at their posts at 04.30, to make the routine checks necessary before the start of the service in due time. The amount of time per day reserved for maintenance was cut from two hours to one hour.
The first vehicles to cross the river when the service resumed were not trucks, but buses. "We had a worrying situation", the Sofala provincial director of public works, Cristovao Forquia, told the paper. "There were minibuses whose passengers included children and old people, which were held up at Caia. We gave the order to prioritise these passengers, rather than the trucks, and the truck-drivers understood".
The service should improve significantly in January when a second ferry, which was waiting for some parts to be repaired, can also be used for the river crossing. Forquia said these parts were repaired in South Africa, he took them personally to Caia, and they are now being put back into the ferry.
The definitive solution is to build a bridge over the Zambezi at Caia. That, however, will cost between 70 and 90 million US dollars, and so far the government only has promises from donors covering about 40 per cent of this sum.
