We must turn more to railway services

BY EDITOR

20th December 2013

Editorial Cartoon

Tanzania has registered noticeable progress in developing various sectors in recent decades, particularly with respect to transport and communications.

For instance, while it once took up to six hours to travel by bus on a dusty road from Morogoro to Dar es Salaam, it now takes a mere three hours – and it is even shorter by car.

Further, while travelling between Dar es Salaam and Dodoma once took the whole day, it is now only takes at most six hours.
This is largely because smooth tarmac roads have replaced the dusty bumpy ones of old.

But the number of motor vehicles plying our roads has been swelling by the day, the development also witnessing a rise in the volume of contraband being transported from point to point both within Tanzania and beyond our borders.

It was partly in an effort to put a stop to this unwanted traffic, aggravated by the fact that railway transport was no longer reliable, that the government introduced checkpoints along the roads.

But corruption and lack of accountability have made the roadblocks fail to serve the purpose for which they were set up in the first place, including checking the movement of contraband.

Thus, dishonest staff soon turned the checkpoints into personal cash cows! This has been happening in most highways connecting our country with our neighbours, although the government has been taking measures to end the malpractice.

A recent survey conducted this paper at various weighbridges along the Tanzania-Zambia highway (Dar es Salaam via Morogoro and Mbeya and all the way to Tunduma border post) shows that most truck drivers offered bribes to go through with excess loads.

This is economic sabotage, for lack of better words. This is because it compounds the scourge of corruption and contributes to the destruction of our roads.

Allowing overloaded trucks to ply the roads means the government incurring avoidable expenses on repairs or rehabilitation, which would be a serious drain on public coffers.

But as is well known, the government has no money of its own, and a substantial chuck of its budget is in the form of taxpayers’ money. Talking about life in Tanzania being in part results from matters like this which are of our own making and which therefore we could have safely done without.

Corruption and lack of accountability at road checkpoints would have long been eased if we had developed an alternative mode of transport to serve both Tanzania and neighbouring countries. We have in mind the need to revamp the railway system, in particular the Central Railway Line from Dar es Salaam to Kigoma and Mwanza.

The railway system is the cheapest mode of transport across the globe, mainly because it is the most efficient in the hauling of bulky cargo. For instance, where one wagon would carry 48 tonnes, it would take four ten-tonne lorries to do so.

Therefore, we strongly recommend that the government direct more of the financial and other resources at its disposal into the revamping of railway services. By doing so it would better tackle the problem of corruption and inefficiency at roadblocks, and thus make the lives of our people better. 

SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN