After personally inspecting the Sena railway line that links the Moatize coal basin in the western Mozambican province of Tete to the port of Beira, the chairperson of the publicly-owned port and rail company, CFM, Rosario Mualeia, has declared that not a single kilometre is up to scratch.Accompanied by a group of journalists, Mualeia traveled the entire length of the line on Monday and Tuesday. The line, sabotaged by the apartheid-backed Renamo rebels during the war of destabilisation, was supposedly fully rebuilt by the Indian consortium RICON. RICON, the majority shareholder in the Beira Railroad Company (CCFB), was supposed to deliver the line, ready for use, by September 2009. After repeated delays RICON/CCFB declared that the work was ready on 31 January this year.A deeply skeptical Mualeia decided to look for himself. He told the Maputo daily “Noticias”, at the end of the visit, “My greatest unhappiness is that I couldn’t see a single kilometre, out of the 554 kilometres of the line, which can meet the standards laid down in the contract”.The government gave RICON, on 24 December, a provisional notice that it intends to rescind the Indian consortium’s contract. Under the terms of the contract itself, RICON has one last chance – it will retain its position in CCFB and its management of the Beira rail network if, within three months (i.e. by 24 March) it corrects all the faults in the line.Mualeia did not see how that could possibly happen. “There is a great deal of work still to be done, and bearing in mind that the independent engineer will certainly point out other aspects in his inspection, I don’t believe that the contractor, however great its efforts, can complete the work on time”.Mualeia said that RICON has neither the financial resources nor the skilled manpower to complete the job by 24 March – particularly as much of its equipment is out of order. He thought it inevitable that the government would definitively cancel the RICON contract.He added that the most serious defect he had seen concerned the ballast. Track ballast consists of the stone on which the tracks and sleepers are laid. It holds the tracks in place, and facilitates drainage – of crucial importance during the Mozambican rainy season.Poor and uneven ballast, as seen on Mualeia’s visit, means that rails fall out of alignment, thus greatly increasing the risk of derailments. Mualeia also pointed to the lack of drainage channels. Inadequate ballast plus no drainage channels means that storm waters will stay on the line. If the line is seriously flooded, the ballast will be contaminated with soil, and might be washed away.The contract also envisaged rehabilitating all 17 stations along the Sena line. But Ricon has only managed to complete work on two of them. Work on others has gone at a snail’s pace. Thus the construction of a new station building at Caia began last August – but as of Monday had not proceeded beyond the foundations.If the contract is indeed cancelled, RICON will be compensated for the investment it has made. However, most of the investment in the line to date has come from outside funding agencies – 104.5 million US dollars from the World Bank and 50 million euros (68 million dollars) from the European Investment Bank (EIB). Between them, the CCFB shareholders (RICON and CFM) have invested 48 million dollars.When RICON departs, management of the line reverts to CFM, which must ensure that, by September, the line is ready to take six million tonnes of cargo a year. It is in September that the first trainloads of coal exports from Moatize are expected to travel down the Sena line to Beira.Mualeia spoke last week of CFM seeking a new partner for the Sena line – but did not say who he had in mind. Cited in Wednesday’s issue of the independent daily “O Pais”, Mualeia ruled out leasing the line to any of the companies mining coal in the Moatize basin, on the grounds that this might lead to a conflict of interests between the company given the lease and the other mining companies.
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