Leonardo Blair, Staff Reporter
A view of the Anchovy Railway Station which once accommodated travellers en route to various destinations islandwide. - FILE
GOVERNMENT RECORDS show that the Jamaica Railway Corporation (JRC) currently has no mandate for its operations, yet for years since its shutdown it has continued to operate at a loss with some 78 workers pushing a bill of more than $30 million annually.
Unaudited financial statements submitted by the Ministry of Transport and Works (MTW) to the human rights group Jamaicans For Justice (JFJ) after a request was made under the Access to Information Act, show that the defunct company has been racking up significantly more in expenses than it earns despite its 'no mandate' status.
Government currently disclaims responsibility for the actions of the statutory body. A letter from the Ministry of Finance dated November 30, 2004 and signed by Ms. Helen Rumbolt, in response to questions posed by JFJ, explains that the JRC currently receives no help from Government and pointed out that there is no mandate for its operations.
"In September 1992 after 147 years of continuous operation, the corporation was taken off the government's budget and placed in a privatisation pool that is being managed by the National Investment Bank of Jamaica," said Ms. Rumbolt.
The NIBJ is a wholly-owned government financial institution charged with managing the privatisation of several government-owned entities including the JRC.
NO MANDATE FOR OPERATIONS
"Since the closure of the corpo-ration," continues Ms. Rumbolt, "There has been no mandate for its operations. However, a skeleton staff continues to maintain the lines operated by the bauxite companies. It is from these earnings that the 'defunct' corporation compensates its workforce."
In the last two years, however, based on the financial statements acquired by the JFJ, the rail company generated no income from rail maintenance contracts and just a little more than $200,000 for the 2002/2003 financial year.
Its largest income earner has been from track user fees which up to the last financial year, was just above the $35 million mark.
Projected expenditure for the 2004/2005 financial year has also increased greatly. Security costs have jumped from nil expenditure the two previous years to $3.5 million last year. Expenditure on security equipment also jumped exponentially from just under $46,000 dollars in 2000/2001 to $2 million in 2001/2002. Some $5 million was also projected to be spent on a squatter-removal project in 2001/2002 along with another $5 million on a public education campaign. Expen-diture on bridges and culverts "along the mining corridor," have increased from just under $4 million in 2003/2004 to some $12 million last year. However, in 2001/2002, the JRC had projected some $12 million in expenditure on rehabilitating bridges and other rail-related structures.
Entertainment spending doubled to $66,000 last year from $32,000 the previous year. The total projected expenditure on the category listed as 'other goods and services' last year was some $56.5 million, twice the total of the two preceding years for the company with no mandate for its operations.
In addition, at least one of the bauxite companies operating in Jamaica, WINDALCO, explains on its website that it is no longer in business with the JRC. "Windalco's rail transportation requirements for alumina and imported bulk materials were met by the Jamaica Railway Corporation (JRC) up until November 1990, when a new agreement came into effect with JRC. Under this agreement, a new entity Middlesex Railway Services (MRS), a division of WINDALCO provides rail service for the company.
"MRS operations are confined to WINDALCO corridor tracks. All shunting operations at the port and both plants are now undertaken by the new entity. JRC continues to own the mainline tracks in that corridor, while MRS provides all track maintenance services," explains the bauxite company. "All rolling stock (164 rail cars of various types) and the switching locomotives are owned by WINDALCO and operated and maintained by MRS. Permanent crew accommodation, track maintenance and locomotive maintenance and servicing facilities are in place."
Further information submitted by the NIBJ points out that the JRC's balance sheets currently show that the corporation's $500 million government debt stopped accruing interest as of January 1, 1982. "The amount comprises the cost of locomotives, rolling stock, equipment, materials, spare parts and services financed by proceeds of foreign loans, and other advances to and on behalf of JRC by Government from 1960 to 1999/ 2000," explains the NIBJ.
Megan Deane, the NIBJ's director of project operations points out in a written statement that the 78 employees provide services in connection with the bauxite industry, estate management and security. "Persons are also engaged on a task basis for track maintenance and the general upkeep of the premises."
In the meantime, the NIBJ has had only three strong expressions of interest in the railway business in the last 10 years.
NEGOTIATIONS TERMINATED
In a response to The Sunday Gleaner about the privatisation efforts, the bank explains that after two years of ongoing talks with Jamaica Rail Limited (JRL) which started in 1995, "negotiations were terminated". The confirmed members of JRL on record in February 1996 were TMG International U.K. Ltd, Fidelity Finance Merchant Bank, Alcan Jamaica, Trafalgar Development Bank and Canadian Railway.
Another seven years of talks with Rail India Technical and Economic Services (RITES) also came to a halt in 2004 when negotiations were again terminated after one of the company's business partners pulled out of the plan.
The most recent negotiations with the Chinese CAMC Engineering Company Ltd. remain nebulous.
While "NIBJ currently has no information on the initiative with CAMC," according to a statement from the bank, Transport Minister Robert Pickersgill has been making positive statements on the railway's revival.
Just this month, the minister announced that Wang Yuhang, vice-president of China CAMC Engineering Co. Ltd., visited the island and is expected to send his team of engineering experts to Jamaica shortly the same team Mr. Yuhang had promised to send "shortly" while being interviewed by this reporter in February. "So far, we have not seen the (railway) site as yet but in the next two or three weeks after our spring festival, we are going to be sending our technical team to Jamaica," Mr. Yuhang had promised at the launch of the China-Caribbean Trade Fair at the National Arena in mid-February.
He had explained that his company's interest in the project was "not a matter of 'if ' we are going to do it, but 'how'."
Months after this promise, however, Minister Pickersgill, in recent interviews, is still only in a cautiously optimistic wait-and-see mood.
But while the nation waits to see, the JRC's balance sheet continues mounting a fresh deficit each year.
For the last financial year, 2004-2005, employee compensation was projected at almost $34 million inclusive of subsistence and travelling allowances. This is more than half of the nearly $60 million income, the statutory body expected to generate last year and almost all the $35 million they expected to earn from 'track user fees'.
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