Haya, baada ya kuonyeshwa life cycle maintenance cost na waganda, sasa twende Ethiopia tuone changamoto zao, kumbuka Ethiopia walimaliza kujenga reli yao miezi saba kabla kenya imalize, na hadi wa leo bado wako kwa testing phase ya reli za mizigo mizigo!!!! hakuna official scheduled freight trains...
Ethiopia wana umeme mwingi Kushinda hata Kenya, changamoto zao ukiskia afadhali Kenya mara mbili...
--------
The train has 1 car with VIP 4-berth compartments, 1 car of 6-berth open compartments with seats and power outlets in the hallway, 1 dining-car selling very basic food (a basic "sandwich", some cookies, chips and water - though it was their inaugural journey) and 8 hard-seats cars with 118 seats. Dining and hard seat cars only have power outlets for the attendants. The train currently stops in Adama and Dire Dawa only as the other stations are not ready and not yet staffed. We stopped twice between Lebu and Adama, including once for 5 minutes because we hit a goat at a road crossing (the management company then sends some of its local staff to pay compensations). We arrived in Adama at 9:15 and stopped for about 40 min for an unknown reason. The train then passes through less populated areas at between 90 and 100 km/h; you're in the very basalt-y plain of the rift valley, surrounded by soon-to-be woken small volcanoes. After riding 2h15 from Adama, the train stopped in the bush not far from Metehara. I saw a goat on the side that couldn't seem to use its back legs. I thought it was giving birth ("cuuuute") until I realized there were more inanimate goats a few meters further. The train had gone full speed through a herd, killing 30. Locals came and there were soon 30ish people around the train. The four federal police guys who are always aboard the train went to discuss with them as usual. However the shepherd didn't want to let the train go until he gets compensated (for 70 goats, since some were pregnant and some cubs need their dead mother...). More federal and local police came, about 20 in total. The train left after 7 (!) hours of negotiations which, according the the Chinese boss in the train, included some calls to the Ethiopian minister of transport and the head of the federal police in Addis, at dusk (I suspect the shepherd let it go because they had to go home for diner, otherwise they would have stayed!). The boss told me "they do it on purpose to get money. They ask an unreasonable price. The other day we killed 12 camels and they asked for a million birr".
We then went straight to Dire Dawa. The train was so late than we stopped in Dire Dawa for the night. It was supposed to leave Dire Dawa for Djibouti at 2:52 pm; we arrived at 9:30pm. The train managers were very sorry and stressed that it is the very beginning of the operations and it will improve with time. They were pretty efficient in managing the situation, booked a hotel in Dire Dawa and took us there by 4x4 even though I told them I wouldn't mind sleeping in the train. Next day, the train was supposed to leave to Djibouti after midday, as the train from Djibouti was due to arrive at 11:30ish, and there is only one track on most of the journey. I got a phone call at 9:40am saying a car is waiting for us at the hotel to take us to the station. Once at the station (about 20 min from the centre on a soon-to-be-paved road), the federal police didn't want to let me in until the Ethiopian immigration guy checks my passport. Re-thorough bag check, then a guy used the immigration counter to register my departure from Ethiopia. Having lived here for 2 years, I expected a wide range of possible problems (no internet connection, fingerprint machine or camera not working...). However it went pretty smoothly, albeit a bit slow, about 10 min. The train waited for me since I represented 50% of the 2 passengers.
We left at 10:40. After 1h40 of normal ride the train got stuck for 30min in the desert because there was no electricity. Then we were running at 110 km/h according to the GPS. We stopped again because of power failure at 13:15 and power came back 1h later. Apparently they once got stuck for 10h... We stopped at Ayesha station 40 km from the Djibouti border for 30 min to meet the train from Djibouti and leave half the crew to join it. The other train has about 30 Djiboutian passengers. Then another 2-min stop as we killed a young camel. Ouch! No-one was around so we continued. We arrived at the border at 3:35pm.
Train travel in Ethiopia & Djibouti - train times & fares
SGR railway project runs into more trouble
HAGGAI MATSIKO July 9, 2018
The News Today Leave a comment
The launch of SGR in 2016 in Kampala. FILE PHOTO
SGR: Chinese contractor faces boot as Kutesa camp returns
Kampala, Uganda | HAGGAI MATSIKO | President Yoweri Museveni is renegotiating the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) contract – again. And the negotiations are not going his way, meaning that once again the project is likely to be delayed even more.
The Independent has learnt that Museveni is once again negotiating directly with the contractor; China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC), after he fired the previous head of the SGR project, Kasingye Kyamugambi.
Kyamugambi’s crime, according to sources, is that he defended the $ 1.95 billion price CHEC has quoted for the 273km line between Kampala and Malaba that Museveni does not like.
Some insiders claim that Kyamugambi’s firing is the climax of intense lobbying by a competing firm—Yapi Merkezi Insaat VE Sanayi—which secured a similar contract in Tanzania and has managed to win the support of some within the walls of his office, aides at State House and officials at the Works Ministry.
The main objective appears to get CHEC’s contract cancelled. Given that Kyamugambi was opposed to this, he became a target of the anti-CHEC campaign.
Trouble for Kyamugambi is that some of his staff who appeared to support CHEC’s competitor are more influential at State House. One of these is Miriam Kankunda, a former Senior Private Secretary, who was now working as Kyamugambi’s assistant in charge of Finance.
This is the same Kankunda whom, when Joy Kabatsi, the former Head of Legal department at State House was fired in 2012, said “was busy moving around with papers reporting to the President, mentioning my name”. Kabatsi said Kankunda is the one who got her in trouble.
“She has always wanted me out and I can assure you this brings in the Sembabule politics. She is a Hon. Sam Kutesa lady. He has people he has sponsored to really harass me in State House and my work here has not been easy,” Kabatsi was quoted in Daily Monitor interview in 2012.
Kutesa’s close associates are once again being mentioned among those who want CHEC out and the Turkish Yapi in.
It will be recalled that Kutesa’s son-in-law, Albert Muganga was behind another company; China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC), which lost the SGR deal to CHEC. The losers even took the government to court but later apologised to President Museveni. But they never rested.
Some insiders are basing on this to conclude that powerful forces were against Kyamugambi. They say powerful forces have blocked documents supporting the CHEC case from reaching Museveni and created fake emails in Kyamugambi’s name and sent them out to potential suppliers showing that he was soliciting bribes. The SGR office was forced to run adverts noting that this was a fake email.
But their main plot has been a campaign mounted to show that the CHEC contract was inflated.
All this while, some officials at the Works Ministry, aides at State House and even some staff at SGR have been reporting to Museveni that Kyamugambi is a stumbling block to the SGR.
Inflated costs?
The Independent has learnt that in an attempt to get on top of the situation, Museveni on February 15 wrote to the Minister of Works and Transport, Monica Azuba, noting that after enquiring from multiple technical sources, he had found several possible weaknesses in the current SGR plan and concept.
He directed her to form a committee to investigate it and involve Dr. Badru Kiggundu; the engineer who previously headed the Electoral Commission, and later investigated construction anomalies at Karuma and Isimba dams, to investigate the deal.
The Kiggundu’s committee issued a damning report in May, which appears to have sealed Kyamugambi’s fate. According to Kigundu, CHEC tender is inflated by over $600 million.
Following this report, Museveni at a State House meeting ordered that Kyamugambi is fired and replaced with Perez Wamburu, who has been the chief civil engineer in the Ministry of works.
Interestingly, Wamburu was part of another team, which Azuba had set up earlier on Museveni’s orders on the same issue. Wamburu and team had travelled to Kenya investigated and concluded that the CHEC contract was okay.
The team was led by Prof Edward Rugumayo and included former Uganda Railways Corporation managing director Daudi Murungi, Makerere University’s engineering don, Umar Bagambadde.
The committee noted that it would be technically erroneous to compare Uganda and Tanzania’s SGR because while Uganda’s railway is based on Chinese specifications, Tanzania’s is based on Arema standards, which is American.
“We note that the total costs given by CHEC are within the cost estimates provided by JB Gaulf for the Kampala-Malaba line,” the experts noted, “These costs also include provisions for locomotives, rolling stocks and the Kampala URC station complex and the Tororo railway training school.”
Kyamugambi’s camp says it is not clear whether President Museveni saw this report. Apart from the report, Prof. Rugumayo’s team had also prepared a memo for cabinet but every time it was to be presented it would allegedly not appear on the agenda. The Rugumayo report that was availed was also allegedly heavily edited.
According to Kyamugambi’s camp, the clearest sign that Museveni had not been presented with the original paper is that he set up another committee to do the same job. But others say it is not unusual for Museveni to do that.
You are being redirected...