Chinese trains paid from cash reserves

THE four Chinese locomotives bought by TransNamib for N$44 million were paid from the parastatal’s own cash reserves, Works and Transport Minister Helmut Angula told Parliament yesterday.

Responding to a question by Arnold Tjihuiko, Angula said payments were accompanied by letters of credit ‘through the banking systems directly to the supplier of the goods in China.’ ‘No local agent or middleman was involved at any stage of these transactions,’ Angula said.The locomotives arrived in Namibia five years ago, but could be used for only 33 months and suffered 265 failures during that time from October 2004 until June 2007, Angula had told Parliament in July.’TransNamib grounded all these locomotives in June 2007 due to their poor performance,’ Angula added.’The decision to buy them was economically justified, but due to a lack of a proper technical analysis of the Chinese manufacturer’s design and a lack of quality control, these locomotives were not suitable for the Namibian environment.’In response to former CoD parliamentarian, Norah Schimming-Chase’s question as to who would pay for these ‘white elephants’, Angula said back in July that TransNamib and the Chinese company had agreed in 2005-06 that the Chinese would rebuild the four locomotives at a cost of US$260 000 (about N$2,6 million.) The Chinese train bought for the route from Windhoek to Ondangwa – the Omugulu GwoMbashe Star – was bought for US$2,3 million (about N$23 million), the Minister told the House.It was originally intended as a shuttle train between Windhoek and the Hosea Kutako International Airport, but this never materialised. The train was rerouted to the Windhoek-Walvis Bay route and from July 2006 to the northern route between Windhoek and Ondangwa and ran once a week. The Omugulu GwoMbashe Star (OGS) however broke down in March 2007 with a broken gearbox casing. As this product was a one-off unit manufactured for TransNamib, a spare part had to be manufactured in China and arrived in September 2007, according to Angula.During the test run, the whole gearbox disintegrated. Replacement parts arrived 15 months later, at the end of 2008. This time the repairs were completed and the test runs were successful. Since the end of 2008, the OGS has been running but it does not go to the north.