Tenke – Marie Milemba recalls the terrifying moment when the freight train she was on slid backward, speeding downhill as it lost traction before several cars derailed and tumbled into a ravine.
“I am traumatised,” Milemba told AFP.
“Our (car) was stopped by an electric pole. We were lucky”.
Footage at the crash scene shows twisted shells of railway cars stuck in the ravine and muddy train tracks strewn with cargo.
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Milemba was travelling as a stowaway on a freight train that crashed in southeastern Democratic Republic of Congo last week, leaving 75 dead.
Survivors blame authorities for forcing them to travel in dangerous and illegal conditions, saying there is a network of officials who pocket desperate travellers’ money and encourage clandestine transit.
“We do not have a choice,” Tchijujia Corea, another survivor of the crash, told AFP.
The train derailed at 11:50 pm on Thursday at the village of Buyofwe, about 200km (124 miles) from Kolwezi, seven of its wagons plunging into ravines.
The train was carrying several hundred stowaways at the time, Marc Manyonga Ndambo, director of infrastructure for the state railway company (SNCC), told AFP.
People regularly jump rides on freight trains to travel across the vast country because of the lack of passenger trains and the difficulties of travelling by road.
A provincial official attributed the crash to a “sudden loss of traction”.
One survivor, Donat Kabuya, blamed the train driver.
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“It was the driver, the train conductor, who led many people to their deaths because he was driving too fast,” he told AFP.
‘Pitiful salaries’
Fabien Mutom, head of SNCC, expressed regret about the deaths on Sunday, adding that the “freight train was not suitable for passengers”.
He said that there are four passenger trains that made the same journey each month.
Corea disagreed.
“This is false,” he said. If so, “people would buy their tickets and travel normally”.
Instead, desperate stowaways resort to illegal journeys.
“We pay the train agents and military, who facilitate clandestine train trips,” he said.
An engine-driver at SNCC, requesting anonymity, acknowledged that he was “obligated” to go along with this illegal system “like everyone else” because of their “pitiful salaries”.
“It’s a multilevel network involving the military, the SNCC police all of them appropriate the empty wagons,” he said.
“They give us a small percentage”.
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SNCC railway workers are owed up to 150 months of back wages, the conductor added.
Although his salary of 580 000 Congolese francs ($290) is now “almost regular”, it is still not enough to make ends meet.
The official death toll of the train crash stands at 75, with 125 injured.
Some survivors expressed doubt over official numbers, estimating much higher losses.
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Source: AFP
Picture: Pexels
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