Kenya must invest in rail

[John Ashworth]

KENYA MUST INVEST IN RAIL

Posted on 26 October 2009 by Railways Africa Editor

Decrying a soaring road accident fatality rate and pondering his own question posed in Business Daily (Nairobi), “How can we get long-distance trucks off the roads?”, George Wachira takes readers back thirty years:

“Before the advent of the pipeline in 1978 and before the demise of the then EAC [East African community], the rail system dispatched products from Mombasa to all depot towns as far as Kasese in Uganda and Moshi in Tanzania. There was no town-to-town trucking of petroleum. Trucks were used only for deliveries to customers and service stations.”

An extended oil pipeline network across the region and improved rail capacity and efficiency, Wachira writes, are what is needed today. “Pipeline and rail infrastructures should feature prominently in any regional planning for ‘corridor’ improvement, not purely because of road accidents but because it is an economic priority for the region.”

He recalls several horrific accidents involving road petrol tankers, all of which would have been averted had the fuel been carried by rail:

“A fortnight ago, a news item read: ‘As many as 70 people were feared dead after a fuel tanker and six commuter buses crashed in southern Nigeria.’ This is no different from what happened in Molo in January this year where over 100 Kenyans perished and others [were] seriously injured.

“At Iganga in Uganda in 2002, about 80 people died; at Kasese in Uganda in 2003, a bus collided with a fuel tanker and killed over 50 people; at Sidindi near Kisumu 25 people died; and at Muchatha near Nairobi in 2004, 10 died.

“Most of the serious accidents have occurred on long journeys from one city to another or from one country to the next. Some accidents have occurred when villagers scoop spilt fuel while others are a result of exposed vehicle electricals.”