Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA) says plans to engage Chinese investors in the revitalisation process of the authority are on course as negotiations are set to commence next month.
TAZARA Head of Public Relations Office Conrad Simuchile says the negotiations are expected to be completed within a year.
Mr Simuchile says the engagement of Chinese investors comes in a wake of the continuous poor performance of the railway authority despite the abundance of potential traffic for TAZARA.
He attributed the Authority’s continuous poor performance to lack of sufficient capitalisation.
Mr Simuchile says the authority’s Council emphasised that it is critical that a lasting solution for TAZARA be found, through the engagement of the Chinese investors.
“The move is in line with the directives of the two Heads of State of Tanzania and Zambia, who met in August 2022 and directed that TAZARA be revitalized quickly, which made the Council to direct the Joint Technical Committee to complete the process of engaging the Chinese investors, who have expressed interest in reviving TAZARA,” He added.
Meanwhile, review of the TAZARA Act has been concluded with the Zambian Government having be given time to review the proposed changes in the Draft Bill in order to align the contents of the Bill with the aspirations of the New dawn administration.
This came to light during the 64th meeting of TAZARA Council of Ministers and was made available through a press statement to the media in Chinsali yesterday.
The main reason for Tazara’s failure has little to do with lack of sufficient capitalisation. It is lack of professionalism in running the venture post construction. Africans think once a project has been completed it will look after itself. And the gods will maintain it.
We pay no attention to maintenance. If we had left management of Tazara to the Chinese it would be running at great profit at present. I recently visited Freedom House, left uncompleted by KK, and I was shocked at the state of the building just a few years after it was completed. We aren’t looking after it professionally. I dont think it has a professional caretaker. Like Tazara it will quickly decay and we will start spending massive amounts repairing bits and pieces of it
This is so true. Today I was watching Zambia playing Lesotho at Levy Mwanawasa. You can’t imagine that a stadium so new can have such brown
withered grass! Who manages it? Obviously no one is there to look after the grass. Everyone thinks it will look after itself.
I grew up in Ndeke Kitwe and the nearby Arthur Davies stadium had super green grass 12 months of the year. The power company employed a nursery man with qualifications in horticulture to ensure a comfortable playing pitch