The Sunday News
Robin Muchetu, Senior Reporter
THE National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) has set in motion a number of strategies to enhance operational efficiency and turnaround its fortunes as it seeks to become an employer of choice and a mover of bulk goods in line with the country’s vision of being an upper middle-income economy by 2030.
Strategies such as staff rationalisation, reduced salary bill, culture change training programmes among employees, elimination of redundancy and redeployment and elimination of self-remuneration through illegal means have since been set in motion.
In an interview with Sunday News, newly appointed NRZ general manager Ms Respina Zinyanduko said the country’s sleeping giant will soon roar into life and regain its status of being the largest employer and mover of bulk goods and passenger services across the country and beyond.
The parastatal which has been facing operational challenges, legacy debts and low investor confidence is set to get a new lease of life as the new boss comes in with a three phased, ten-year-turnaround strategy that will see NRZ being a more profitable entity and an employer of choice.
Ms Zinyanduko said her goal was to stabilise, grow and expand the company in the proposed turnaround strategy.
“Under the stabilisation phase, we will be seeking to steady the ship and prevent further sinking.
The strategies that will be used include staff rationalisation which has already commenced and is expected to be completed by the first quarter of 2022.
This is a process wherein NRZ is aligning the structure to current business operations with a view to enhance operational efficiency while at the same time reducing salaries to revenue ratio to sustainable levels to allow the company to meet its operational costs and pay monthly salaries, leaving room for it to invest back into the business,” said Ms Zinyanduko.
This process, she said, will see elimination of redundancy by redeploying staff to needy areas and also result in training and re-training of the workforce.
Ms Zinyanduko said culture change was a key element in her strategy as she noted the need to renew a positive work culture within the entity which she said was eroded over a period of time following the failure by NRZ to pay salaries for a period running over eight years.
“This resulted in a spirit of self-help amongst employees who resorted to self-remuneration through illegal and unscrupulous means.
This culture continued even after NRZ resumed paying salaries in full in mid-2019.
We managed to clear all the arrear salaries with an ex-gratia component using internally generated funds.
“There is further need for employees to appreciate that NRZ belongs to us and we are responsible for its renewal.
The ‘we eat what we kill’ mentality should be well understood by the employees and stakeholders.
To achieve this, we will continue using the carrot and stick approach where those who excel and innovate will be rewarded while those who stray will also be punished.
We are also running a number of culture change programmes for the employees,” she said.
Turning to infrastructure, Ms Zinyanduko noted that the rail was in a bad state due to lack of repair and maintenance over the years.
“This has seen NRZ being affected by derailments especially during the rainy season.
We currently have 250km of rail under cautions and we intend to reduce these cautions at the rate of 50km per year.
We will give priority to the Vic Falls-Harare line.
Currently our trains are traveling at a maximum speed of 35km per hour reducing to 10km per hour on caution areas.
This affects the turn-around of both locomotives and wagons and thus affects our profitability.
The situation is even worse when we are using hired equipment as the turn-around time is key in deriving value from the transactions,” she said.
To further address the issue of infrastructure, NRZ is planning to revive its Natanele Quarry Mine in Shangani.
The mine will allow NRZ to produce its own ballast stones for the main line and will go a long way in maintaining the main line which was neglected for a very long time.
In terms of debts incurred in the previous administration, Ms Zinyanduko appealed to the Government to take over the loans.
“On foreign loans, my assessment is NRZ has no capacity to pay these loans and we will continue appealing to the Government to take over the loans to allow NRZ to start on a clean note.
Some of these loans were taken by the Government and on-lended to NRZ. Some of the projects that were funded by these loans are no longer giving value to NRZ, a typical example being the loan for the electrification of Dabuka to Harare line which was vandalised and is now defunct. We also have other debts, among them a USD10 million debt for spares.
We have a payment plan with the company. We have since significantly scaled down buying from the company as we realised that the spares were very expensive,” she revealed.
The new GM said she aims at reducing the number of hired equipment at the parastatal.
“NRZ is hiring locomotives, there is a need to reduce the number of hired locomotives and work towards use of their own equipment.
We have started the process by repairing 100 fuel tankers using our own funds and we are also looking at a partnership with some local fuel companies to repair another 100 tankers which will be dedicated to the company.
“The repayment will be through set offs.
We are also in the process of repairing 1 000 wagons and we have so far funded the bulk of the spares required.
This will go a long way in reducing the gap.
The repair of the tankers and wagons should be completed by the first quarter of 2022.
We have also started buying spares for locomotive repairs so that we can use our own locomotives.
We intend to repair a minimum of five locomotives in 2022 and fully rely on our own resources in terms of locomotives by mid-2023,” she added.
Ms Zinyanduko said there were several other turnaround strategies that were in place that will change the fortunes of the giant parastatal.
@NyembeziMu
