Maputo, Mozambique — Harsh economic facts have dictated on the need for deep cuts in the workforce of Mozambique's state-owned rail and port company, CFM, Transport Minister Tomas Salomao told parliament Tuesday in Maputo.
Answering a question from the ruling Frelimo Party on the redundancies in CFM, Salomao pointed out that in 1983 the main Mozambican ports were handling 15 million tonnes of cargo a year. But in 2000, the three main ports only handled 6.7 million tonnes (3.5 million in Maputo, 2.5 million in Beira, and 0.7 million in Nacala).
One of the railways sabotaged by the apartheid-backed Renamo rebels during the war, the Sena Line from Beira to Malawi and to the Moatize coalfields in Tete province, has not been repaired up to now. Closure of this line for more than a decade and a half has meant a lost income of 480 million dollars for CFM, Salomao said.
In addition, during the war CFM lost two thirds of its locomotives - but the work force remained intact.
Now a three-year programme to restructure CFM was under way, the minister said, involving early retirement, or redundancy, for around 12,000 workers. The government had secured funding of 100 million dollars (largely from the World Bank) for this programme.
Much of this money will be spent on generous redundancy packages for CFM workers.
Salomao stressed that the workers are not simply being shown the door: part of the programme is to retrain workers, help them find new jobs elsewhere in the economy, and to assist workers (singly or in groups) to set up their own micro-businesses.
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Renamo deputies asked Salomao about the proposed privatisation of the state airline, LAM. He replied that a consultant has been hired to assess the company, and to make recommendations by June.
He pointed out that international commercial aviation is currently in crisis, with companies merging across the globe.
Salomao believed that LAM's future lay in the domestic and regional markets, not in intercontinental routes. He pointed out that LAM has recently reduced its Maputo-Lisbon flights from two to one a week as a cost-cutting measure.
He condemned as "economically and financially wrong" last year's decision by the LAM management to operate a Maputo-Dubai flight once a week. The losses were huge, and the route was scrapped after a few months.
"LAM was induced into thinking this was a good market", said Salomao. "But the LAM Boeing-767, with seats for over 200 passengers was flying with 30 or 40 passengers," he said.
Renamo also complained about LAM's alleged monopoly on the so-called "domestic backbone" (the Maputo-Beira-Quelimane- Nampula-Pemba set of domestic routes).
Salomao pointed out that the LAM monopoly was ended last year. The privatised light aircraft company, TTA, had complained bitterly against the monopoly, and after the Administrative Tribunal had backed TTA, Salomao signed a dispatch authorising TTA to fly these routes.
TTA has not yet imported the planes it needs for these Routes.
