Procurement of SGR equipment kicks off

Dar es Salaam. Tanzania Railways Corporation (TRC) has issued a notice for procurement of equipment for the proposed standard gauge railway (SGR) this financial year.

Under the general procurement notice, TRC seeks to procure SGR rolling stock that includes three electric multiple units (EMU), ten electric locomotives, 60 passenger coaches, 100 freight wagons and maintenance equipment. An EMU is a multiple-unit train consisting of self-propelled carriages using electricity as the motive power. It requires no separate locomotive, as electric traction motors are incorporated within one or a number of the carriages.

This comes at a time when construction of the first phase of the SGR linking Dar es Salaam and Morogoro is in progress. The first phase entails laying 300 kilometres of track and related infrastructure at a total cost of $1.2 billion (Sh2.6 trillion).

The second phase linking Morogoro and Dodoma has already been launched.

In total, the project will comprise five phases, and will eventually link Dar es Salaan and Mwanza. There are plans to extend the railway to Rwanda and Burundi in the future.

TRC’s assistant project manager for the first phase, Mr Machibya Masanja, told The Citizen in a telephone interview yesterday that the aim of the notice was to show the corporation’s budget plan for 2018/19.

“The advertisement you have seen today is meant to show our plans for this financial year,” he said.

Mr Masanja added that the procurement plan should be approved within 30 days after which the tendering process would commence.

He noted that TRC earlier this year floated the first tender for the SGR project, adding that the process had yet to be finalised.

According to the notice published yesterday, TRC is expected to invite tenders on August 24, 2018. It is expected that the tender will be closed on September 25 and awarded on November 9. Mr Masanja said since the SGR was new technology in the country, there was a need for capacity building at various levels.

“Since the SGR project commenced, we have been building the capacity of staff to ensure that they will be in a position be fully involved in day-to-day operations when the railway eventually becomes operational,” he said.