THE ongoing construction of Lot 5 of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) is set to give Lake Zone fresh impetus as a business hub for the Great Lakes region.
Mwanza city is now destined to ride high in solidifying its position as a business hub in the region with the construction of an Inland Container Depot (ICD) at Fela Station. This station will be responsible for handling full and empty containers that will be moved to and from the depot to Dar es Salaam Port through the SGR.
Shedding light on the project, Lot 5 Project Manager, Engineer Christopher Callist said apart from the ICD, there will be a marshalling yard at Fela Station as an activity centre in the SGR system, where the trains are received, loaded and dispatched to their destinations.
ICDs are physical facilities that store the containers temporarily before they are moved to the port and loaded on the ships. Exporters can also place their cargo inside the containers at an ICD. Along with being a storage facility, they can also provide export and import customs clearances. All these services are provided at the Dar es Salaam Port and can be availed at Fela dry port.
At the Fela dry port, sea custodians, freight forwarders and customs brokers as well as officials from the customs department will provide their services to the importers and the exporters.
They will process their shipment closer to their godowns and factories and in turn help in de-stressing and decongesting the Dar es Salaam Port.
These activities coupled with the easy access to Dar es Salaam Port, a nine-hour travel time by SGR train, plus the accessibility through Lake Victoria to almost all the East African Community member states and the Great Lakes region, will propel the already booming Mwanza City to become the major business hub for the region.
Mwanza is also poised to become an economic powerhouse of the region, thanks to development of Isaka dry port, which will serve the same purposes for goods destined to Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda as well as the establishment of Buzwagi Special Economic Zone (BSEZ).
The BSEZ is aimed at turning the mined space into a business zone to generate similar benefits with which the mine used to provide the local municipality and its surrounding communities with taxes, fees, and jobs after the ecologically friendly closure of Buzwagi Mine.
The feasibility study for the BSEZ showed it has the potential for creating approximately 3,200 jobs per year, generating over 150,000 US dollars a year in service levies in a short term, as much as 1.3 million US dollars in a long term, and fetching 4.5 million US dollars Pay As You Earn (PAYE) in a short term and more than 18 million US dollars in long term.
The BSEZ is strategically located to create the perfect pattern of logistic hub spokes which is one of the most critical success factors for any logistics hub.
Buzwagi is just 40 kilometres from Isaka dry port, which connects it to Dar es Salaam Port through the newly under construction SGR, along the Isaka - Rusumo highway. Good enough, Mwendakulima airstrip is at its door steps.
Apart from the aforementioned potentials, the lot 5 project pours numerous economic benefits back into the hosting community in forms of employment, vocational skills, local suppliers and stimulation of several business and trade, which add value to the agriculture value chain for farmers and SME along the line.
The local content nature of the project requires labour ratio standards of 80 per cent locals to 20 per cent foreigners, and it has been complied with. The Seke Sleepers Plant employs a total number of 231 employees out of about 7,000 employees hired for the lot 5 construction.
"The good thing about this factory is that all these workers you are seeing here are Tanzanians, and the majority were drawn from local communities," says Eng Callist.
On completion of the project, the employees, majority of which are youth, will be equipped with new skills, experience and most importantly the confidence of being part of the team that delivered such a huge project.
"To me, the level of confidence to these young and energetic people is very important, once you have skills, experience coupled with confidence, am optimistic that after here these guys can move mountain and they won't be the same young men and women we found at the start of the project," says Eng Callist.
Upon hiring, all employees were put on special training by contractors; China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) and China Railway Construction Company (CRCC) to enable them keep pace with the SGR's new construction technology.
"I have technical skills from Veta, but after going through an induction course, I was exposed to the real new technology, with the experience we have here even after the project is over, if this factory remains here we can still operate it efficiently," says Solomon Mgine, who works at the plant.
The Seke Sleepers plant covers the total construction of around 1,680 square metres, which is responsible for the production of about 531,100 concrete sleepers in section 5 of the SGR center line. The sleepers' storage area is about 15,000 square meters and the designated maximum storage capacity is 100,000 pieces of sleepers.
According to Lot 5 project manager, the sleepers' production of the project adopts the stretching bed for long line production which is a total of four line production lines and each production line is equipped 50 groups of one by eight sleeper steel mold with a daily production capacity of 1,600 pieces.
"All four production lines in the sleeper plant are capable of producing ordinary sleepers, among which, one production line will be transformed into bridge sleeper production line in due course to produce guard rail sleepers," said Eng Callist.
According to the project manager, there are a total of 7,000 direct employees; almost 80 per cent are drawn from local communities along the railway line.
"We hired people of different levels of education and professions, all were trained here and now majority of the work is done by people from around the hosting villages," says Callist.
The proposed electrified SGR line from Mwanza to Isaka have 249 kilometers of mainline and 92 kilometers of the passing loops, undertaken under the design and build contract and the RAMS (Reliability, Availability, Maintainability, and Safety) passes through three regions of Mwanza, Simiyu and Shinyanga, which entails the construction of culverts, underpasses, overpasses, bridges and service ducts.
Overpasses and underpasses are provided where the proposed SGR intersects with existing roads or where human and livestock will need to cross to the other side of the SGR and service ducts are provided in collaborations with other utility providers stakeholders to allow their services to cross the railway without disturbing the line.
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The Tanzania SGR project aims at promoting reliable mobility along the Central Corridor of Tanzania, through the construction of the railway line from Dar es Salaam to Mwanza, and new lines from Isaka to Kigali in Rwanda, and Uvinza to Musongati in Burundi.
There are also plans for connecting Burundi and DRC Congo with the SGR, which will then connect DRC to the Port of Dar es Salaam. Such upgrades and construction shall lead to the unlocking of the central corridor of the East African Community (EAC), which has potential for agriculture and mining.
The SGR project is in line with the overall aim of the government to revitalize and reinvigorate the rail sector so as to contribute more to the national economy.
Moreover, currently over 95 per cent of the traffic leaving the port of Dar es Salaam is transported by road to the detriment of the road network. It is thus expected that the upgrading of the rail sector, especially the Dar es Salaam- Isaka-Mwanza link, will increase freight and passenger capacity as well as ease pressure on the road network.
The SGR is also expected to reduce the travel times for both goods and passengers and bring enormous benefits to the people of Tanzania and its neighbours. Freight costs are estimated to be reduced by 40 per cent. Every train takes 500 trucks off the road, significantly cutting pollution, congestion and risk to people and vehicles using the highway.
