EDITORIAL: Will the new railway plan work? Only time will tell

Railways were first built in Tanzania in 1893 when German occupiers of what was then Deutsch Ost-Afrika, later Tanganyika, laid a rail-track at Tanga port.

In due course, railways became part of the East African Railways and Harbours (1961-67), then East African Railways Corporation until the collapse of the first East African Community on June 30, 1977.

Thereafter, the system became Tanzania Railways Corporation until September 3, 2007 when, under the public-private partnership mode, Rites of India was awarded a tender to operate the system jointly with the government in 51/49 per cent shareholding, renaming it Tanzania Railways Limited (TRL).

The government also established Reli Assets Holding Company (Rahco) to oversee the system’s infrastructure.

However, things went from bad to worse, and the government’s 25-year agreement with Rites was terminated on July 22, 2011. Railway operations were subsequently put under a local interim management team on July 26, 2011.

What with little or no progress made in maximising returns from investments in the sub-sector, the management was tasked with reviving TRL operations. To that end, the Railways Act, 2002, which had abolished the former TRC and established TRL and Rahco, was recently amended to merge the two entities into a new Tanzania Railways Corporation (TRC).

So, both railways infrastructure and operations will once again be under one roof, come rain or shine.

The idea is to inject a new lease of life into the country’s troubled railways system, so as to make it more energetic and active than before

To that noble end, we urge the new management, led by Prof John Kondoro as board chairman and Mr Masanja Kadogosa as director general, to diligently devise ways to surmount the challenges that have kept our railways in troubled waters for far too long.