The Sena railway line in Mozambique, which is used by miners Vale and Rio Tinto, reopened last Tuesday after protesters blocked the tracks for nearly two days. It’s the only railway currently available to transport coal from Tete province to the port of Beira. On May 12, 200 brick makers blocked the line after their business was resettled by Vale’s mine. They were asking the company to compensate them for the loss of livelihood. Vale denied that the brick makers had lost their ability to make a living. “Vale believes the production of bricks in Moatize has not been paralysed, and was not paralysed by the arrival of the coal mine project in Moatize,” Vale said in a statement. It maintained that it had merely transferred the business from the mine area to another space in Moatize, “where it continues to function fully”, Vale stated. Police reportedly arrived to disperse the crowd in the early morning hours. Vale has previously come under fire from its resettlement programme in Tete. Many families there are protesting that they have no access to water, power or agricultural land in their new homes to which Vale relocated them. In January last year, more than 700 Moatize residents blocked the Sena line because of anger over resettlements, preventing the transport of coal from Rio Tinto’s and Vale’s mines to Beira. The latest Sena line blocking was the second time services had been suspended this year. Floods in February led to the closure of the line, causing Rio Tinto and Vale to declare force majeure on their shipments.
