By Darlington Gatsi
THE National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) has established that a cigarette stub caused an inferno that destroyed decommissioned coaches at its main station in Bulawayo in September.
40 coaches were destroyed in the blaze that engulfed the NRZ workshop with initial reports by the parastatal suggesting foul play.
This incident followed another fire that involved coaches in Harare, raising suspicions of arson attacks.
Appearing before the Parliamentary Committee on Public Accounts, NRZ general manager, Respina Zinyanduko said internal investigations point to a cigarette stub having been the cause of the fire.
“The initial report that I got from loss control as well as the report I got from a commission of inquiry that we set, it constituted of different departments of NRZ has indicated that it could be a fire was as a result of some employees, because we do not allow some people to smoke at work, some employees could have taken shelter in those coaches trying to hide and smoking a bit.
“One of them might have left a stub that was still burning and there was the wind; it then resulted in the spread of fire,” said Zinyanduko.
The decommissioned coaches had exceeded their operational life span and the NRZ was awaiting their disposal as scrap.
Zinyanduko told the Committee that NRZ lost US$40 000 in the value of the coaches as a result of the fire.
“The value that was lost was minimal because we had taken the seats from these coaches and they were fitted to those which were operational. These were more like shells that were parked with the intention to refurbish them in the future or disposing of them.
“The value that was there was on the scrap value of the assets, I examined the coaches one by one myself and they are still in a condition in which we can dispose of them as scrap metal. Those coaches in our books were carrying a value of about US$1,000 each because they were just shells,” said Zinyambuko.
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