TransNamib’s journey to recovery

The country’s railway parastatal, TransNamib signed a three-year cooperative Memorandum of Understanding with South African powerhouse TransNet Freight Rail, starting a journey to restore TransNamib to its former self in the railway transportation sector.
TransNamib Chief Executive, Sara Naada earlier this week in Windhoek said that the Memorandum of Understanding is to formalize an already existing relationship between the two entities in the areas of business process re-engineering. The MoU formalised this relationship, with special emphasis on capacity building and transfer of railway operations skills, knowledge and competencies.
“We are looking forward to receiving assistance in rolling stock and infrastructure condition assessment, as well as to put together synergies in the establishment of TransNamib’s own command.” added Naada.

Currently TransNamib is at a stage where they are finalizing their new Strategic Business Plan and the formal cooperation between the two entities came at an opportune time.
“The implementation of the New Strategic Business Plan would require dedicated efforts, knowledge and experience in order to make it a success and achieve its intended purpose. As much as we believe we can do much on our own, we can not forego the opportunity to work with an entity such as Transnet Freight Rail which has immense expertise and rich experience in the rail sector” expanded Naada.
Again Naada stressed how TransNet Freight Rail’s similar background to TransNamib’s, makes it the ideal partner where they can source assistance in the transformation of the parastatal into an efficient, effective and customer oriented organisation.
She said TransNet Freight Rail, even before the formal signing of the MoU, had been supporting TransNamib through the secondment of Chris Sono, the Rail Operations Specialist who joined TransNamib in December 2013.
The CEO of TransNet Freight Rail, Siyanda Gama said the cooperation between the two entities was much welcomed as there is a need and desire for the region’s integration and cooperation as both entities share the same goal of migrating from road to rail and to become the preferred mode of transport as well as to reduce the cost of business.
He said that for a cooperation like TransNamib, it would be two to three years to see developments become fruitful but he firmly believes TransNamib will prevail in the transport sector.