Following long periods of deferring maintenance and an ageing rolling stock, the delays have crippled the parastatal’s ability to deliver freight, with the rail network also being increasingly unreliable. Caretaker General Manager, Dominic Ntwaagae, revealed last week that BR was facing a mounting maintenance budget that needed to be financed amid a financially challenging time for the organization, something which threatened the viability of operations. “The locomotives and wagons are overdue for maintenance, and we don’t have the money. “We have not been able to finance this maintenance budget from our own books,” he said at a media briefing.
It is estimated that the Mahalapye-based entity needs P58 million for the project. Suggestions are that the technical challenges facing BR have been propagated by structural neglect, with maintenance of the signaling and communication systems having also lagged. Parts are reported to be obsolete, and replacement components are hard to source, so the system is not fully functional, and safety and scheduling suffer. Authorities acknowledged as far back as 2023 that the aging rolling stock and limited upkeep had severely affected BR operations. As maintenance costs continue to weigh in on operations, BR expects a financial loss of P25 million this year, remaining in the column of the country's loss-making parastatals. The expected narrow loss follows years of maintenance budget backlogs, including low volumes of freight and cargo transport. Last year, BR posted a P90 million loss as its financial woes deepened and the entity attributed this to “financial pressures and governance irregularities that have festered over the years”.
