BR to resume internal accident investigations
Koketso Kgoboge | Friday February 28, 2020 18:49
“I am a bit hampered by this inquiry because I was advised against running my own investigation parallel to this inquiry. But once this process concludes, then I would start my investigation and work on the way forward on issues of health and safety,” Makwinja told the BR inquiry Board held at the Mahalapye Cresta Hotel.
The Board of inquiry was constituted by government to look into the BR train’s fatal derailment last year near Mahalapye. Makwinja admitted that the BR house was not in order, but disclosed that processes were being rolled out to bring the national rail service to stability.
He said they had commenced work on replacing the obsolete operational system, improving service delivery, auditing human resource, improving safety and passenger train service and securing capital to deal with other organisational shortfalls.
The BR investigations would ostensibly be intended to address matters like safety, and some unreported issues that cropped up as a consequence of the inquiry.
“Obviously, we are not delivering to expectations of the Board and the nation and we need to improve on it and start delivering,” Makwinja said when he appeared before the Board of inquiry into the BR train’s derailment last year near Mahalapye.
The BR head honcho revealed that the financial status of the organisation was unhealthy.
The monetary instability begun when they tapped into the reserves to secure the passenger train, he revealed.
He further said lack of capital has adversely affected their processes as an organisation in transition. Therefore he was also struggling to attract the calibre of people that can lead the transformation, “but we have not given up,” he told the inquiry.
As a result of failing to attract competent individuals and yet enduring continued series of retirements that inundated BR, numerous top positions are held on acting basis; a matter Makwinja said needed immediate attention.
“I figured there were holes in the human resources department and when I requested for an HR audit the HR director resigned. Others had also resigned for reasons that I cannot reveal here,” he said.
He noted they were in the process of recruitment of an HR director and once concluded, the audit would take course.
Makwinja was worried about his staff after having most of those that appeared before the board of inquiry, “forgetting or at worst denying knowledge of their jobs. Going forward, we are going to have even more personnel acting on positions.”
The BR boss said operating a passenger train has also proved unprofitable, too costly, and gobbled further into BR coffers. Despite capital constraints, he said they do not intend stopping the train, in fact he outlined plans to improve the service.
He believes the railway service remains the safest and cheapest mode of transport and many people have not lost confidence in it.
“The public still wants to use trains, and we have to make them available.
We have agreed to continue running the service because more than anything passenger trains are a service to the nation. It drives the economy.”
He noted that they intended to purchase Diesel multiple unit trains that requires no separate locomotives as the organisation embark on modernising passenger trains and “making train rides a bit more enjoyable.”
In addressing issues of health and safety, he said BR was in the process of preparing for a workshop in Gaborone. But the Lobatse bound passenger trains may be stopped as the boss believes trains should start in Gaborone to Francistown as a cost reduction measure.
He maintained that safety remains top priority at BR though he admitted they could have responded better on the fateful night with better preparedness. In his view responding to disaster situations should be a national matter.
“As far as safety is concerned, I wish we could have a fully-fledged national safety response teams stationed in strategic areas across the country to improve response to all national disasters. Botswana Railways could do that in Mahalapye.”
In his early days at BR, the CEO said he found the Safety Health Environment and Quality Department understaffed and overwhelmed. As a response to the situation, he said he created two positions of senior people in Francistown and Gaborone to ease the burden on the SHEQ manager.
BR was having many derailments and level crossing accidents at the time and safety improved but were later hit by other resignations in the department.
“But going forward we have many recommendations from different findings in the operations we conducted amongst which include a hydrology study and we are waiting for capital so that we start to implement. We need to invest a lot in the railway line.”
Despite some people still thinking walking the tracks was a better way to inspect, he said they were looking at digitising their processes. He mentioned that they had engagements with different companies such as Huawei that proposed to assist with cameras that improve distance vision.
In conclusion, they had made a number of interventions in safety programmes at BR and coming from a mining environment himself, where issues of safety are very strict, he assured that he would ensure safety of all the operations at the organisation.