Kavindele vows to pursue rail construction project

Kavindele vows to pursue rail construction project
By Maluba Jere and Chiwoyu Sinyangwe
Monday April 28, 2008 [04:00]

NO amount of frustrations will prevent us from successfully constructing a rail line to link Chingola to Solwezi, Northwest Rail (NWR) company Limited chairman Enoch Kavindele has said. And Kavindele has confirmed that President Mwanawasa has requested NWR to submit minutes of its meeting with Lumwana and Kansanshi Mines regarding the refusal by mining companies to sign off-take agreements committing to using the rail line.

Announcing the movement of construction equipment on site to Chingola, Kavindele also expressed sadness at the statement by Environmental Council of Zambia (ECZ) that it required about 65 working days before it could approve the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the proposed northwest rail project.

Kavindele also announced that NWR was this week going to submit the 12 copies of the final EIS and also pay the K600 million statutory review and monitoring fee to ECZ.

“We are ready to start construction and we are moving on site this week in accordance with a directive made to us by the President during the meeting we had with him on April 10 which was attended by NWR deputy chairman chief Mumena,” Kavindele said.

“But ECZ is now telling us that we will only start construction 65 days after they approve our final EIS…of course, this is despite the command by the President that we start constructing immediately. So we shall use this time to train our people on site about the field works and also to construct the 100 metre demo line.”

Kavindele also wondered why ECZ took too long to approve the final EIS report when some projects had proceeded without the approval of the ECZ while in some cases, its authority had been overruled.
He, however, said he was not in support of projects that had proceeded without the approval of ECZ.

“I know of the steel plant in Kafue, cement plant in Ndola, the silos here and some Chinese-sponsored projects…all of which have proceeded without the approval of ECZ. But I am not supporting such movements and I don’t want to break the laws because I have spent my adult life making laws in Parliament,” said Kavindele.

“But, of course, we understand these as just challenges of indigenous development. Others were allowed but we have to wait for 65 days.”

The construction of the rail line to connect North Western Province to the national line and eventually linking Zambia to Angola was expected to come on stream in 2010 at a cost of over US$400 million.