Beit Bridge delays add to Spoornet headaches

LEONARD NEILL
SPOORNET REITERATED the causes of its current lack of delivery when general manager of its National Operations Centre, Shulani Qalinge, addressed the Africa Rail conference in Midrand recently. The lack of an integrated maintenance plan in the past and under-investment in assets had resulted in maintenance backlogs, she said. Spoornet was also faced with bottlenecks because of long turn-around times and border post delays, she added. The most serious of these is at Beit Bridge where wagons stand idle making it difficult to undertake maintenance, resulting in congestion. “The reliability and availability of assets has made us compromise the quality of service,” she said. The steady decline in rail traffic’s share in the southern African region since the early 1990s and the inability of governments to continue financing subsidies had necessitated the adoption of market-based approaches to remedy the situation, she added.