12 Feb 2020

Two Botswana Railways (BR) employees have told an ongoing inquiry into December 10 train accident that due to the voice recording system being out of service, the company does not have any voice recordings pertaining to the fatal accident.

Appearing before the board of inquiry on Tuesday, head of signals and communications section, Ms Lesedi Gaolemoge said since it was commissioned 12 years ago, the voice recording system had not been upgraded.
Ms Gaolemoge, however, said while it was critical to have the voice recording system up and running, its absence could not stop trains from operating.

However, she noted that not having functional voice recorders in place compromised trains’ safety.

On the backup of information recorded in the voice recording system, Ms Gaolemoge explained that BR had two voice recorders with two hard drives each, adding in their operation, one recorder served as backup for the other.

However, she concurred with the witness who testified before she did that both voice recorders had crashed in May and September last year and were yet to be replaced.

Ms Gaolemoge further confirmed to the board that the supervisor at the operational control centre was currently not able to discharge his duty of monitoring and supervising BR’s north and south control panels because his panel was down.

Testifying earlier, a technician in the signaling department, Mr Baagi Dipholo said the voice recording system, which was used to record communication between the control centre and the train crew, was out of service on the day of accident.

Mr Dipholo admitted that the absence of any voice recordings to shed some light into what could have transpired on the day of the accident, could impact the ongoing investigations into the accident negatively.

“I agree that the absence of recordings will hinder the investigations. Unfortunately, our system failed and we cannot therefore avail any recording to the board for the occurrences of the night of the accident,” he stated.Nonetheless, the witness said BR had, after the collapse of the remaining voice recorder, started the process to procure replacements for the two units.

Though he could not commit to a timeline, he expressed optimism that the process would be completed soon.ENDS