Cuito – Six passenger train carriages from the Benguela Railway (CFB), currently undergoing rehabilitation, will be placed on the track in the next twenty days, to reduce pressure on users and improve services provided to the population, the CFB delegate in the Lobito Atlantic Railway consortium, Ottoniel Mauro de Almeida, told ANGOP Tuesday.
He was speaking at the end of the Workshop on the added value of the Lobito corridor, challenges and in view of local potential, held by the government do Bié, as part of the 5th edition of the Potato and Corn Fair.
Ottoniel Mauro de Almeida revealed that the carriages have been in the country since last Saturday, coming from South Africa, after being recovered.
According to the source, the management of the Benguela Railway (CFB), will invest USD 3 million to recover and replace 50 carriages from South Africa, to humanize services on the Lobito/Luena route and vice versa until November this year.
Currently, the CFB has 92 carriages, of which only 42 are in operation.
The official said that the equipment has already reached its useful life (10 years), therefore justifying the wear and tear it has shown on each trip.
However, he reported that during the first half of this year the CFB transported more than five hundred thousand passengers and around 60,000 tons of various products from Lobito to Luau.
Meanwhile, the CFB delegate appealed to the population to preserve the carriages, avoiding acts of vandalism as much as possible, as almost all carriages show a marked degree of degradation inside, both in the seats and in the electrical system. LB/BAN/MS/MRA/DOJ
