RAILWAY R.I.P: 500 defective Wagons, zero expertise, incompetent leaders- Uganda Railways now on life support

Dear Editor,
Allow me to inform Ugandans that the Uganda Railways is clinically dead. No amount of work using the current government thinking can resuscitate it.

Railways is a specialized skills area that currently doesn’t have any training school in the country. In the past; we had a Railway training school in Jinja and Nalukolongo. These were dismantled leaving the company without any preparatory structures.

This is the biggest undoing in the company that now finds itself unable to carry out refresher courses or training on new machinery like the 98 class locomotives. Because of the above and other inherent incompetencies; the Railway finds itself in a situation akin to promoting a cadet officer who has never fired a bullet to be the Military Chief of Staff.

These have inevitably led to the following:-

(1) There are currently more than 500 defective Ugandan wagons distributed across Uganda. 90% of these wagons are easily repairable. Of the defective wagons; about 200 are box body type wagons that the current administration claims doesn’t have markets. Some of these wagons could be conveniently made into container carrier wagons. In the 1990s, more than 300 box body wagons were very cheaply changed to container carriers and are working to date.

(2) More than 300 defective Ugandan wagons were recently repatriated from Kenya and are scattered in Ugandan stations with minimal mechanical defects. The Ugandan Railway officials have failed to repair and put them to proper economic use. The officials are in negotiations to buy delicate Chinese wagons expecting fat kick backs. Some of these officials being failed politicians are in high gear mobilizing funds for political campaigns in 2026. The Chinese wagons are delicate because they can fall in very high numbers of more than 10 per accident and yet the old Ugandan wagons can even fall only one per accident.

(3) No periodic maintenance service is being given to Ugandan wagons due to lack of spares and manpower. This is something that will catch up with Railways very soon and the country is about to start registering massive failures and accidents.

(4) Poor performance of the few locomotives due to lack of oils, fuel and poor sand pouring on wheels in motion. The fuel chain is greatly infiltrated by some people in the management team to an extent that immediately some good amount of money drops in the company account, the dealer managers alert the fuel suppliers to come demand for their money and discontinue fuel supply if not paid.

(5) The Civil Engineering department has suffered the most under this messy management. It’s a department that has traditionally the least educated staff. Because of a blind move of eliminating people with less than S4 qualifications; in 2021 most of the permanent staff were replaced with casual staff who belong to pseudo companies privately controlled by the Kampala bosses. This is aggravated by the current lack of tools and spare parts resulting in no maintenance works on Railway lines.

(6) Complete lack of coordination between the Board, Management and Workers. The workers know; but should be coordinated, synchronized and appreciated. The management is largely blind; but have decided to handpick some talkative staff to be their guides as they soldier on. The Board is ambitious, but don’t know the knob they should touch to make the company fly the way they want. Many old knowledgeable workers are terribly disgusted knowing that the company is on a failure countdown.

(7) Indeed the Railway layout plan is a pyramid standing upside down as there are more people at the top than the bottom. Over the years; there have been more filling gaps at the top than at the bottom where many old workers are retiring without replacements. All the recent downsizing has affected the foot soldiers more than the top commanders who pretend to be damn serious and busy during that downsizing week.

(a) For how long is the government going to feed, cloth and treat this gang of non performers?
(b) Why doesn’t the Government reprivatize Railways?
(c) Seek public views about how to run Railways and you will discover that many Katwe trained fools are wiser than a professor.

I pray for all to succeed.

CONCERNED CITIZEN.

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