SENA LINE NOT FINISHED, SAYS CFM

Contrary to claims by the Indian consortium running the line, the rehabilitation of the Sena railway between the central Mozambican port of Beira and Moatize, in the western province of Tete, is far from complete, the chairperson of the publicly-owned rail and port company, CFM, Rosario Mualeia, declared on Tuesday. He was reacting to a front page headline in the independent daily “O Pais”, which announced “The Sena Line is ready”. Mualeia regarded this claim as just a propaganda smokescreen to hide the failure of the Indian group, Rites and Ircon (Ricon), to meet deadlines. Management of the Beira rail system, consisting of the Sena line and the Machipanda line, from Beira to Zimbabwe, was awarded, by international tender, to Ricon in 2004. Ricon holds 51 per cent of the shares in the Beira Railroad Company (CCFB), while the other 49 per cent are held by the Mozambican state through CFM. Addressing a Maputo press conference, Mualeia pointed out that CCFB/Ricon had repeatedly failed to meet deadlines to complete the reconstruction of the Sena line (which was comprehensively sabotaged by the apartheid-backed Renamo rebels during the war of destabilisation).  In 2008 Ricon had promised to deliver the rebuilt Sena line by September 2009. 15 months past this deadline, the rehabilitation was not complete (even though the track had been relaid). Tired of the delays, the government decided to rescind the CCFB contract, and a notification to this effect was delivered to CCFB on 24 December. At this point, Ricon “tried to convince our government that this time it had created the conditions to conclude the main part of the work by 31 January, and that the remaining smaller work could be completed within 90 days”, said Mualeia.The claim blazed across the front page of “O Pais” was meant to persuade the public that this final deadline had been met. Mualeia did not believe it, given that so much work on the line had to be done or corrected. “As shareholders in CCFB, we have an interest that the target should be met”, he said, “but we are realists and we have known our partners for the past six years. Hence we are cautious. On several occasions Ricon has declared parts of the job complete, but the results of the inspection have proved otherwise”. He pointed out that the Sena line can only be regarded as “ready” when it has been fully inspected and CFM has issued a certificate guaranteeing that it is safe to use. The line from Dondo (where it branches off the Machipanda line) to the Zambezi had been inspected, but “defects and omissions were detected, which have to be satisfactorily corrected”.  As for the rest of the line, from the Zambezi to Moatize, so far Ricon has not submitted any notification requesting an inspection. One of CFM’s main concerns is inadequate drainage of the line. Drainage depends on ballast of the correct size (25 to 50 millimetres), free from impurities such as earth and fine gravel. Mualeia warned that any railway without proper drainage would cease to operate, and would be at risk of serious accidents during the rainy season. “The Sena line is located in areas prone to flooding in the Zambezi Valley, and so it cannot be concluded until the necessary drainage work is operational”, he said. He revealed that there have also been severe problems with the Machipanda line, leading to a virtual halt to rail traffic between Beira and Zimbabwe. Mualeia admitted that the Zimbabwean economic crisis contributed to the decline in Zimbabwean traffic on the railway, but insisted that this was greatly compounded by Ricon’s incompetence. Recently, he accused, Ricon had proved unable to deliver a shipment of wheat to Zimbabwe in good time, and so part of the wheat deteriorated. Some Zimbabwean exporters had abandoned the railway and sent their goods to Beira by road, while others opted for the much longer route to the port of Maputo. Mualeia fully expected the government to push ahead with rescinding the CCFB contract. This meant that by 25 April, CCFB/Ricon would have to hand the Sena and Machipanda lines back to CFM. CFM would then be able to find another partner to complete the work which Ricon had left unfinished. Mualeia did not suggest who that partner might be. He stressed that “the low operational performance” of CCFB had left the railway’s clients, its workers and the government “completely dissatisfied at the way in which Ricon is managing CCFB”. Since it had been impossible to solve the problem through agreements between Ricon and CFM as the shareholders in CCFB, the matter had been channeled to the government. Delays to concluding the Sena line threaten the calendar for exporting coal from Moatize. The open cast mines being built by the Brazilian company Vale and Riversdale Mining of Australia are due to start exports later in the year, perhaps in the third quarter. But Mualeia was confident that CFM, with its as yet unspecified partner, would be able to finish what Ricon has left uncompleted in time for the first coal trains.As for the Sena line’s capacity, Mualeia put it at five million tonnes a year, once the work started by Ricon is finished. He thought that additional improvements to the line could raise its carrying capacity to 12 million tonnes a year.