NATIONAL Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) has approached Transport and Infrastructural Development minister, Obert Mpofu seeking permission to lay off 6 000 workers, it has been learnt.

By Everson Mushava

The development comes at a time NRZ is struggling to pay salaries. Workers who have been retrenched in recent years have not been paid their packages.

“I received a request from the board to retrench 6 000 workers and I said that was not sustainable,” Mpofu said. “NRZ employed 25 000 people in Bulawayo and that employment sustained the engineering firms in Bulawayo. And now there are 7 000 people employed at NRZ.”

He was speaking at a dialogue session organised by Alpha Media Holdings (AMH) Conversations, in Harare. AMH are publishers of NewsDay, Zimbabwe Independent, The Standard and Southern Eye.

Mpofu said NRZ required approximately $260 million in the short to medium-term and the ministry was currently negotiating with possible financiers to agree on the funding model to be adopted. “Already, plans are afoot for the immediate turnaround of NRZ. To facilitate the provision of effective and efficient rail transport, my ministry is implementing a Railways Recapitalisation Programme with a view to restore NRZ’s capacity as a cost-effective and efficient bulk carrier of goods,” Mpofu said.

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He said the NRZ turnaround programme would see the rehabilitation of tracks, signaling and communication equipment as well as the refurbishment of locomotives. “Our focus is not only confined to existing rail infrastructure, rather, it transcends to incorporate new rail networks linking the domestic and the regional network system,” he said.

The development at NRZ comes at a time Hwange Colliery recently laid off 1 000 employees as a result of viability challenges.

Also speaking at the same event, Agriculture, Irrigation and Mechanisation minister Joseph Made said a good rail transport system was indispensible to agricultural development.