The list of rail accidents in Tunisia is growing. The National Railway Company of Tunisia (Sncft) can no longer offer a quality and safe service to its passengers. Severely degraded infrastructure, dilapidated railway network, reduced fleet, warehouses that do not comply with health and safety standards, cruel lack of maintenance and necessary spare parts, poorly protected level crossings and human errors that reveal a lack of training and awareness. In short, our railways are among the least secure in the world, hence the recurrence of fatal accidents.
A train derailed overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday at Msaken station (governorate of Sousse), causing the death of the driver and a passenger, and the injury of 34 other passengers, according to the director of communication at Sncft and its spokesperson Hassen Miaadi. In a statement granted to the TAP correspondent in Sousse, he specified that the injured passengers were transferred to the hospitals of Msaken, Sahloul and Farhat-Hached in Sousse to receive the necessary care and that their state of health was stable.
Without giving further details, the Ministry of Transport undertook yesterday to submit its final report on the circumstances of the accident no later than June 27, 2023.
The Minister of Transport, Rabii Majidi, had gone to the site of the accident early yesterday with a view to establishing responsibilities and taking the necessary administrative and regulatory measures against anyone whose “the breach was proven”says a press release from the ministry.
SNCF is collapsing under debt
Indeed, according to the latest figures available, the cumulative losses of Sncft would amount to 800 million dinars in 2020, while its debts exceeded 365 MD and the sums owed by the company to the ministries for transport free exceeded 62 MD at the end of March 2021.
Consequences: dilapidation of the fleet, inability to acquire the spare parts necessary for maintenance, deterioration of the situation of the maintenance warehouses, blockage of the construction of new warehouses, in addition to the lack of qualified labour.
The company’s strategic plan, which focuses on the rehabilitation of infrastructures, the renewal of equipment, the improvement of governance, the restoration of financial balances and the development of services, has never been implemented.
However, a preliminary study relating to the restructuring of Sncft was presented in 2020 and which clearly sets out the structural difficulties it is facing and which consist in particular of the dilapidated state of its fleet, its inability to acquire the spare parts necessary for the maintenance, the deterioration of the situation of the maintenance warehouses, the blocking of the construction of new warehouses, in addition to the lack of qualified labour.
The study highlighted the importance of mobilizing the necessary financing to remove the obstacles that hinder the company’s investments and negatively impact its performance and services.
She also mentioned the negative impact of bureaucracy on the mobilization of external financing, which would be behind the delay in the realization of certain projects like that of the rapid railway network.
However, the company has a high potential for development, particularly in the transport of phosphate and cereals and which consists in increasing the share of rail transport of cereals and raw materials such as phosphate in order to improve its finance.
It should be noted that the Tunisian railway network extends over 2,150 km, of which 1,777 km is not exploited, while the fleet is made up of 145 locomotives, 30 electric trains serving the suburbs, 30 trains for main lines, 112 passenger wagons , 2,003 freight wagons, 1,083 dump wagons, 1,361 containers, in addition to the 28 electric trains belonging to the company of the Tunis Rapid Rail Network.
It is becoming urgent to review the governance of the company, to initiate a program of reforms and modernization of its fleet and to train its staff. It is no longer acceptable to classify train accidents as a simple fatality but as a danger for citizens and users.
As a reminder, on March 21, 2022, 84 people were injured when a train carrying passengers (from Riyadh station to Tunis station) collided with another empty train coming from Tunis station, which was heading to the Dubosville warehouse. Four Sncft managers were dismissed from their posts on March 24, 2022, following this accident.
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