Ghana’s railway system: Which way?
By the tenets of modern economic models, an effective railway system, if well, implemented would transform the way a country engages in its business activities and quicken the pace at which development would take place for the betterment of its people.
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All over the world, countries that have developed to the envy of the developing or less developed have had their transportation system well put in place to ensure the smooth running of their economies.
Transportation in itself cannot be done away with in every facet of human endeavor and by finding ways of enhancing productivity and ensuring good standard of living for the citizens of a country, a quick form of transformation is the hallmark to attain.
Though mankind has had the various forms of transportation spanning from automobiles to aeroplanes, the most efficient, effective and cheapest form had been the usage of railways.
This system has been used to transport heavy duty machines and equipment for construction, mining and quarrying and in the provision of the needed infrastructure for the social and economic benefit of the most well developed countries in the world. It has all the time been through this medium that such feat has been chalked.
India’s population of diverse culture is united together through its railway system that forges its cultural, social and economic patterns of life from north to south and from east to west, getting away the distance barrier between its people and making them as one people of a united nation.
Likewise in China, it is estimated that the railway system is its main means of transport with over 10 billion railway trips taken each year.
In Ghana, the railway system began in 1898 under the Gold Coast Civil Service, with its headquarters at Sekondi.It was later transferred to Takoradi after the construction of the Takopradi Harbour. The purpose of building the system was to transport minerals and cocoa from the mainland to the harbour for onward shipment to Europe. These raw materials were to serve as the sources of inputs for the industries and were to be transformed into the goods and services that the European society needed.
So nothing in terms of transporting people from one place to another was the brain behind its construction. But the aftermath of the independence of the nation, successive governments have sought to transform the colonial railway into the overall transportation system, apart from water and road transport.
In 1976, the government sought to separate the railway from the ports and re-engineered it into the Ghana Railway Corporation. The company from records enjoyed the status of a public corporation until March 19, 2001, when it later became a limited liability company.
Current system
Currently, Ghana’s system is mostly of a single track, except of about 30km double track from Takoradi to Manso on the Western lines.There have been limited variations and expansions with the first segment of the Accra-Tema line (Accra to Asoprochonaa) being inaugurated in December 2007 by ex-President John Agyekum Kuffour.It is on record that this was financed partly with external loans and money from the HIPC funds.
Two diesel multiple units, ordered from China CNR Corporation Tangshan Plant ushered in a shuttle service from Accra to Tema in 2008 and in October 2010,our late President John Evans Atta Mills also inaugurated the diesel engine train service, valuing US$23m for the re-constructed Accra-Tema rail network.
During the inaugural ceremony, the then Chairman of the Ghana Railway Development Authority, Mr Dan Markin, informed that a memorandum of understanding had been signed and that funding had been pledged by some foreign institutions for the ECOWAS states, starting from Aflao to Tema, Accra, Winnneba, Cape Coast, Takoradi and to Omaape.
It was also envisaged that as a long-term measure, feasibility studies could be undertaken to expand the Western line to the northern part of the country by extending lines from Paga to Burkina Faso, and all these were to enhance the social and economic activities in the country.
Recently in 2014, Presidents John Dramani Mahama of Ghana and Faure Gnassingbé of Togo conjointly inaugurated the Ghana-Togo railway, auspiciously indicating that the rail line will ensure comfort, and a speedy conveyance of clinker and other raw materials for cement production from the Lome Port to the Diamond cement factory at Aflao.
The 3km rail line, built at the cost of US$8 million, is to connect the Diamond Cement factory at Aflao in Ghana to the Togo railway network, making the Diamond Cement Ghana Limited have access to the Lome Port in Togo. This is also to guarantee and facilitate the easy transportation of the cement produced from the factory to the port and into the country for onward supply to other areas.
Though the project was a partnership between the Diamond Cement Ghana Limited and the Togo Rail Company, it came to fruition with the support of the Ghana Railway Company.
Benefits of a rail system
Actually, because the country has not really focused its attention on the railway sector, all benefits to be accrued as a nation has been eluded. Accra is congested and almost everyday; people spend hours in traffic commuting to and from work. This has affected the time we take to work and invariably, transcended into our outputs as a nation.
The nation also has to struggle month by month to get the foreign exchange to buy petroleum and its other related products for our vehicles; which we all struggle very much in traffic, day in and out and burn a lot of fuel unnecessary as a result. These, all toll heavily on the country’s import bills.
Thus, financial resources that could have been channeled into other sectors of the economy profitably, go to waste as a result of the neglect of our railway sector which could have solved all these problems.
Admittedly, railways do not encounter traffic jams in their transits. They are also faster and offer comfort as compared to travelling in buses or in cars.
Many of our factories can also rely on this railway network for the transportation of raw materials from their sources and from the ports as well. All these could reduce the cost of producing goods and services to feed the nation.
Others are using their railway as a way of conveying tourist to sites and this is fetching them the expected foreign exchange revenues for their developmental programmes. We can also do the same.
Why can’t we re-develop our railway system to carry large and heavy materials from one place to the other? What about the heavy duty trucks from Burkina Faso, Niger and the other land-locked countries whose cargo trucks destroy our roads, coupled with the numerous killings of people on this Kumasi–Accra Highway all the time? Well, from reliable sources, I understand rail transport, is more fuel efficient than road transport in the USA and their system has a rail freight of 63 per cent more fuel efficient than road transport.
According to the National Road Safety Campaign office, road accidents account for more than a third of the deaths in the country every month; taking into cognisance malaria and other diseases that kill us.
The number of road accidents and their attendant deaths and injuries could have all been avoided if we had turn to the railway transport system which is much safer; when compared to all the other means of transport. But Ghana indeed, focuses more on road transport to the neglect of the railway, in addition to our poor maintenance culture.
Strategy/plan of action
To further give meaning to the pillars of ECOWAS, our government can lead the way by championing programmes that would see us linking our various states for the free movement of people and goods on the sub-region.
This is expected to boost trade and revenue reserves for our economic fortunes and improve the well being of ECOWAS citizens as a result.
The collaboration between the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Finance to hire Messrs PWC as transaction advisors to engage a strategic investor to partner government in a Public Private Partnership (PPPs) to renovate the Eastern Railway and the Boankra Inland Port, this year, 2015, is a step in the right direction.
If this becomes a reality, the 300km stretch of broken-down and obsolete narrow gauge rail line to a standard gauge and the development of a 400 acre plot of land at Boankra into an inland port, would safeguard an efficient transport system in the country and in other land-locked countries that court Ghana as a transit point.
Front end engineering designs (FEED) and other works on the western and all the other rail lines should as a matter of urgency be given facelifts this year and all these would improve our transport system for economic development.
Conclusion
We really can do it if we want. The negatives are greater but not surmountable.
Concluding and hinging on in a narration by the Chairperson of the Railway Ladies Association, Eleanor Aikins, sometime during the first anniversary to round off activities for 2014 of the Women’s Committee for RWU and the 33rd anniversary of the Railway Ladies Association; avowed that, the Ghana Railway contributes a significant amount of economic gains to the country and that these benefits sip down into every facet of the economy, including the transportation of bulk haulage of minerals, farm produce, cash crops such as cocoa and timber.
She intimated that; “a country receives enormous financial gains from railway service and therefore, we cannot allow our railway to die”.
So Ghana’s rail system. Which way then? Let us look at the positives once again and we would not regret taking that course.
In fact, all hands must be on deck to realise this dream.
