DRC: a commission of inquiry to understand the reasons for the train accident
A train driver in Kananga in southern DRC in 2007 (Illustration image).
AFP - LIONEL HEALING
Text by: Pascal Mulegwa Follow
2 mins
The official report of the train accident in Katanga reports 75 dead, 125 injured including 28 with trauma.
The authorities have set up a commission of inquiry while some wagons have still not been identified.
It is possible that other bodies of passengers are still under the tons of scrap metal.
The railway company claims that these passengers were stowaways.
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From our correspondent in Kinshasa,
The investigators headed by Marc Manyanga Ndambo, the infrastructure director of the National Railway Company of Congo (SNCC) began the hearings.
First with passengers to understand how they boarded the freight train.
But for the head of the commission of inquiry, a technical diagnosis is also essential: "
There are interrogations and there is a completely technical investigation to try to understand why the drift, why there was this cut in traction.
We will submit the locomotive itself to an in-depth expertise to try to understand what happened
.
Marc Manyanga Ndambo: "The commission of inquiry is there to understand what happened"
Pascal Mulegwa
The preliminary conclusions will be communicated to the authorities before the weekend.
The accident could not be linked to the dilapidation of the railway according to this expert and senior executive of the railway company, even if nearly half of the network borrowed is in very poor condition.
“
When you take the railway, there is infrastructure from 1906, from 1933, but there is still a part that has been slightly renewed.
You have over 3,641 kilometres, about 1,500 which are not in good condition
, explains Marc Manyanga Ndambo.
If they have to be renewed, it's almost 1.5 billion dollars if the 1,500 kilometers have to be renewed
”.
The company is bankrupt.
To survive, it has had to lay off a third of its employees over the past decade.
According to a company official, there is no justification for the presence of illegal immigrants in freight trains often used by poor populations going to urban areas or mining areas.
These accidents on the SNCC rail network are deplorable.
I tell myself that the dilapidated state of the railway will always take human lives if the SNCC does not think of renewing the rails.
Anger of the population in Lubumbashi after the train accident
Denise Mahého
►Also read: In the DRC, the toll of the train accident in Katanga is getting heavier
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