Story by Mhlomuli Ncube
THE rehabilitation and recapitalisation of the National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) took centre stage this Thursday as Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee toured the parastatal’s mechanical workshops in Bulawayo amid renewed efforts to restore rail transport efficiency and industrial capacity.
The visit comes as the Second Republic intensifies measures to reposition the NRZ as a strategic driver of economic growth, industrialisation and regional trade connectivity.
Deliberations involving Parliament, the Mutapa Investment Fund and NRZ management focused on restoring the national rail carrier to full operational capacity and strengthening its core mandate.
Mutapa Investment Fund Investment Officer, Mr Earnest Denhere, said efforts are underway to revive the rail utility’s operational strength and national significance.
“We need to restore the pride of our National Railways of Zimbabwe so that our motto of “We move the nation,” is actually what we are doing in practice,” he said.
The Public Accounts Committee says rebuilding the parastatal is of critical national importance.
“It is not good to see NRZ majoring in non-core business like real estate. The company is an important national strategic asset and must stick to its core business of managing our rail system,” Chairperson of the Public Accounts Committee, Honourable Caston Matewu said.
With the country’s economic activities in mining and agriculture continuing to spread even to new geographic areas, the NRZ wants to also leverage on setting up new routes and creating transportation networks that take cognisant of these previously unexplored opportunity gaps.
“We are in the stabilisation phase in 2026, and it should end in 2027. It will be growth we are in expansion until 2030. So what we are doing are initiatives that we are undertaking so that we can even grow our fleet in terms of wagons, there is support that is immediately coming to grow our wagons to increase them by 540, that should take us to about 3 000, the locomotives yes we are doing refurbishment and these have come through PPPs, but eventually what you will see is that there will be procurement that will come through especially now when we are going to be accessing the Afreximbank facility that Mutapa is also supporting us through facilitating,” Deputy CEO NRZ Mrs Ainah Dube Kaguru said.
Meanwhile, the parliamentary committee also toured the NRZ Mechanical Workshops, which are a critical component of the parastatal’s engineering works.
As efforts led by the Second Republic continue to intensify in repositioning the national rail carrier, strategic partnerships within and across borders, alongside recapitalisation measures, have informed the direction government wants the company to take.
