Rail crossings; death by corporate abuse

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But briefly, in the mid 1920s the railway extended deep into Uganda from Nakuru to Soroti through Tororo before reaching Jinja then up to Namasagali.

Onward to Kampala, it went after the construction of the Nile Bridge in 1926, reaching the capital as we know it now, in 1931.

It then extended to Kasese in Western Uganda where it stopped in 1956. It made its way to Northern Uganda marking arrival in 1964.

Most of Uganda’s export of raw materials were transported to the coast by the train up to the 1980s.

Internally many people who have reached retirement age have vivid memories of this train. They crossed Uganda from East to West and South to North using the railway as they went to school or visited.

The railway was 190kms from Kampala to the Kenyan border,  8kms linking Port Bell to Kampala Railway Goodshed. Here it complimented the vessels that moved people and cargo across Lake Victoria like MV Kabalega which is sleeping at the bottom of the lake having sunk in an accident, MV Pamba recently refurbished after years of disrepair now leased out to the Chinese firm Mango Tree and MV Kaawa soldiering on, from Kisumu in Kenya, Jinja in Uganda and Mwanza in Tanzania.

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To the North it networked through the Eastern towns of Tororo, Mbale, Soroti, Lira, Gulu, and Pakwach with a total length of about 1,266kms.

In 1989, use of the 330kms route to Kasese came to an abrupt end. Before this, the then minister of Transport had said on the floor of  Parliament that whenever the train set off for Kasese he was waiting for an accident to happen.

Years of war, negligence, economic collapse and of course corruption had taken their toll on the company that the late Idi Amin’s regime formed in 1977 after the breakup of the East African Community. 

According to World Bank statistics, as of 2002 Uganda only had 259kms of the railway line left in use!

The NRM government blindly followed the dictates of the Bretton Woods institutions that recommended restructuring and privatisation. It tried to pull out of providing rail transport.

The claim was that the private sector would manage such ventures better to save them from loss making and encroaching on the public purse.

Mark you in many countries of the developed world, like Germany, efficient public transport is run with the state having a huge stake as is with the train system run by Deutche Bahn AG.

The logic, though it may not be said, is that it is only the State that can shoulder the losses that come with such a venture and stay standing. The motive here is mainly movement of labour for productivity and to cut down or subsidize the cost of doing business which overall cushions the economy and the citizens.

 In Uganda the concessioners and all manner of adventurers, speculators and outright thieves tried a hand at running the railway. It ended up worse off than it was as most of them seemed to target the assets including land, housing, wagons etc. Most of these were sold off for a song, in controversial circumstances. 

Nowadays you only get to hear of the URC when the Parliamentary Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises (COSASE,) is exposing debauchery that has become the norm in URC as is with most public institutions.

When they are not disposing of public assets in a dubious manner, they are purchasing almost boarded-off ancient locomotives that look like the ones you see in World War I movies.

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It would be funny if they did not come at the price of modern day space shuttles. Then they have a challenge of attempting tasks that aging donkeys would feel embarrassed to pursue due to their simplicity.

The pure steel slippers that the British colonialists put on the line were uprooted in many places and sold off as scrap to steel companies in some cases by truck load. One fellow  told me as he lamented about how Ugandans hate their country, that this was the best steel he had ever bought!

For many of us, scandal is what defines the railway system in Uganda. Most of us have grown up only knowing about rail transport in theory, for exam purposes in primary school.

After that you get mesmerized when you actually see a train moving on the remaining rail line. As such because it is not part of the things we expect to ever encounter. More often than not you only get to see one when it crosses the road. It is at such times that a number of people have lost their lives and vehicles at railway crossings.

These places have become death traps mainly as a consequence of the general breakdown in order at a company that has suffered corporate governance abuse for years.

A company running trains should as a matter of common sense and decency be aware that when they are to encounter vehicular transport at crossings there should be a warning system. Road users should be alerted about the train’s approach through functioning traffic lights, sirens and automatic or even manually operated barriers.

It is not enough to say that the train has the right of way because the train with all its heavy burden is incapable of halting abruptly as this may lead to derailment.
I stay in Nakawa Division where there are two prominent railway crossings. I have seen so many fatal and non fatal accidents over the years to assume that URC does not know what is happening.

Most times victims are blamed for not knowing that the train has the right of way which is extremely callous and silly because it allows that URC to get away with murder caused by inefficiency and negligence of its civic duty.

That is what we get when State authorities and institutions are not answerable to the public because they have been abused by the people who run the state; the same people who will shield them when they mess up.

They leave the individual to his own devices and if they blink, they go to an early grave.

Mr Nicholas Sengoba is a commentator on political and social issues
Twitter: @nsengoba