Friends of the Rail Forum

RVR REPLACES MD
Railways Africa
Thursday, 07 August 2008

On 4 August, Rift Valley Railways (RVR), concessionaire running the railways of Kenya and Uganda, replaced managing director Roy Puffet with Australian Kevin Whiteway, and appointed Brown Ondego as executive chairman, a new post. This was reported by New Vision (published in Kampala).

Announcing the changes, RVR directors’ steering committee chairman Ngugi Kiuna was quoted saying: "The creation of an executive chairman slot and the subsequent appointment is geared at ensuring that we continue to enhance our management capacity to facilitate a speedy turnaround of the Kenya-Uganda Railways."

Sounds top heavy for my liking

Could be. What I hear when I'm in Kenya is that RVR seems more keen on pleasing its shareholders than on developing the railway, and that they're not really big enough to have enough capital for the major improvements which are necessary. Their labour relations don't seem to be too good, and there's a lot of disquiet that they're apparently only interested in freight and are neglecting the passenger business (well, they are South Africans, after all!).

Politics. Now by this simple move is RVR about to turn around?