My brother sent this article to me from a Zimbabwe newspaper. His comment was they are now paying the piper and should have kept steam!!!
I don't have the url so here is the article, which is foreign I know, but it is narrow gauge and they still have some garratts there!
Greg Scholl
NRZ remains grounded by fuel shortage
3/24/01 9:32:53 AM (GMT +2)
Daily News Correspondent, Bulawayo
THE National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) continues to be grounded and has cancelled all passenger and freight services due to a crippling shortage of fuel which has inconvenienced their major customers, Ziscosteel and Wankie Colliery.
The NRZ transports mainly coal, steel, scrap metal, heavy machinery and passengers. The NRZ is losing $8 million a day as a result, senior managers said yesterday.
Last week the parastatal diverted $100 million meant for its workers’ allowances to procure fuel, but not enough was bought.
Gamaliel Rungani, the NRZ public relations manager, said they had received some fuel from South Africa but it was still not enough for the NRZ’s services to return to normal.
He would not say how soon they hoped to get over the crisis, which has seen the railways suffer heavy losses from failure to transport about 10 000 travellers a day.
The NRZ has a debt of more than $2 billion and is a perennial loss maker.
“We have once again cancelled all passenger trains and freight services,” said Rungani.
“We are struggling with the little we have and service is far from normal.”
NRZ employees last week stormed general manager Sam Zumbika’s office demanding their allowances, but were told the money had been diverted to procure fuel, revealing the parastatal’s desperate financial situation.
The NRZ managers held a marathon meeting in the morning, but still failed to find any options that would lessen the severity of the problems which are threatening the future of the parastatal which employs 10 000 workers.
The financial crisis became clear yesterday when Rungani painted a gloomy picture of the situation at the parastatal which is sitting on heavy debts and sub-standard service delivery due to lack of finance for new spares.
The crisis has been worsened by lack of foreign currency in the country.
Among its major debts is $800 million owed to the Railways Pension Fund, being the contributions which the company makes to its workers’ pensions.
The NRZ has defaulted on making the payments of $46 million a month to the pension fund for the past three years.
This was blamed on the parastatal’s cashflow problems, and Rungani has been quoted as saying that NRZ is owed $1,7 billion by its customers.
Yesterday, Rungani could not quantify the NRZ loss this week due to the grounding of its trains.
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