File photo taken on July 6, 2010 shows a train leaving Dar es Salaam, capital of Tanzania, on the Tanzania-Zambia railway. In 1970s, tens of thousands of Chinese railway workers came here to build the 1,860-kilometer railway, better known in East Africa as the TAZARA. (Xinhua/Guo Chunju)

DAR ES SALAAM, July 29 (Xinhua) -- The Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA) said on Friday it has acquired traffic orders in excess of 600,000 tons for transportation on both ends of the TAZARA railway line.

The authority said in a statement that following a successful marketing campaign and a demonstration of TAZARA's ability to deliver on time, with maximum safety and security, many customers had now offered confirmed freight.

Bruno Ching'andu, TAZARA Managing Director, challenged the workers of TAZARA to rise to the occasion and take advantage of the abundant cargo that was now being presented to the authority for transportation after a successful marketing campaign in the past year.

"We have to prove our relevance to our shareholders as well as to the public by moving all the freight that has been availed to us," the statement quoted Ching'andu as saying.

Ching'andu observed that although TAZARA was facing capacity constraints, the huge demand for the railway transportation services, coupled with the positive and encouraging goodwill from the two governments of Tanzania and Zambia, was sufficient to spur every worker to think of creative ways for overcoming the challenges.

"We need to be innovative and to think outside the box in order to overcome these capacity constraints," he said.

He said in order to enhance the haulage capacity in the short term, and considering that funds for re-capitalization would take long to materialize, the TAZARA management was actively seeking to increase the fleet of locomotives and wagons through short-term measures such as leasing of the required equipment and allowing other external operators to ply the railway within the few weeks.

TAZARA is bi-national railway jointly owned by the governments of Tanzania and Zambia on a 50-50 shareholding basis.

The 1,860km-railway connects landlocked Zambia to the seaport of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and further provides road and railway inter-connectivity to other parts of Southern Africa.

TAZARA was constructed as a turnkey project between 1970 and 1975 through loan from China, with commercial operations starting in July 1976. It covers 1,860 kilometres from Dar es Salaam in Tanzania to New Kapiri Mposhi in Zambia.