The Ministry of Works and Transport has allocated N$562 million towards the development of new railway lines as well as maintenance and rehabilitation of existing and old rail lines.
“Our national desired outcome is to develop the railway transportation infrastructures. Therefore, the specific objectives of this programme are, planning and constructing new railway lines, maintaining, upgrading and rehabilitation of the existing aged railway network to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Standards for Railway Lines (18,5 ton/axel with a minimum speed of 100km/h),” Works and Transport Minister John Mutorwa said this week.
“With combined efforts from all economic sectors, we can put our economy on a sustainable growth trajectory. The purpose of this programme is to ensure the provision of railway transportation services or logistics by rehabilitating and upgrading our existing 2,600km rail network. This will be done through a phased approach and to develop new railway infrastructures that guarantee seamless, efficient, affordable, customer-friendly and environmentally responsive integrated railway transportation solutions,”
He said the Ministry is committed to planning and improving the overall national transport infrastructure.
“This will assist to develop world-class transportation infrastructures and to maintain them. The programme includes the construction of gravel roads, upgrading of gravel roads to bitumen standards, rehabilitation of roads and the construction and maintenance of State-Owned Aerodromes and Airports,” the Minister said.
Mutorwa highlighted that the Ministry’s efforts are to ensure that the country’s status of having good transportation infrastructures remains.
This, he says, can only be achieved by making sure that the nation has modern and reliable transportation infrastructures that are well maintained and cost effectively managed.
Namibia is ranked first in Africa and 23 globally as having the best roads.
“Our objective is to guarantee access to economic and social centres by all Namibians, as well as to link Namibia with neighbouring countries and other parts of the world,” stressed Mutorwa.
New cars for Government
Another key priority that the Ministry wants to address is the lack of vehicles as the current fleet consisting of 3,100 is old according to Mutorwa and thus has become costly in maintenance and repairs in keeping them running. The last procurement of the government fleet was a decade ago, due to fiscal challenges.
“Although the allocation to this programme is clearly inadequate for my Ministry to be able to maintain essential transport services, I, therefore, request for an amount of N$105,217,000 to be allocated to the Government Garage Centralised Support Administration,” the Minister said while motivating his budget in the National Assembly.
“Honourable members, I want you to note that the repair, maintenance and panel beating costs are derived from the trading account that generates its funds from various Organisations, Ministries and Agencies (OMAs) leasing vehicles from the Government Garage. However, the trade account revenue has drastically declined due to outstanding payments from various OMAs.”
“The allocation is to carry out programme main activities such as specialized training for artisans that are needed to keep up in the fast advancing vehicle technology, service, and repair, up keeping of government fleet and stock-taking,” he said.
To improve the bickering situation, Mutorwa said they are engaging with the Ministry of Urban and Rural Development to decentralise the Government Garage functions to the Regional Council in order to accelerate the services delivery.
The Ministry has 59 Artisans or mechanics dedicated to services and repairing the fleet and provides technical advice to various OMAS manning their own fleet.
Other key areas include N$55,351,000 to be allocated to Meteorological Services Administration. The funds will be used to procure and replace the obsolete Automated Weather Observation Systems (AWOS) with new and modern ones in order to meet national, regional and international obligations.
The existing aviation meteorological infrastructures at all the airports that were procured and installed in the early 2000s have served their purpose economically, hence an urgent need to replace them, as the associated software and various critical components are no longer available.
About N$321,381,000) was allocated to the Air Transport Administration division, whereas N$53,020,000 is earmarked to man the Formulation of Transportation Policy, which will be responsible for the regulatory oversight for Bilateral Air Service Agreements (BASA) development; construction and maintenance of Vehicle and Driver Testing Centres, including the development of the Transport Corridors.
A further N$45,561,000 was budgeted for the Maritime Legislation Administration department, and N$6,864,000 was allocated to the Aircraft Accident Investigations Programme.
