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Workers of the Ghana Railway Company Limited (GRCL) have begun an exercise to clear weeds along the railway line from Tarkwa to Awaso. This is to enable engineers to undertake an assessment of the state of the line as the GRCL prepares to resume the haulage of bauxite to the Takoradi harbour. The line had been used for the haulage of bauxite but for more than five years, the GRCL stopped the haulage from Awaso because of frequent derailments that destroyed mineral trucks. Following that, the line was used for the haulage of manganese but that also had been fraught with challenges following a drastic reduction in the quantity of manganese hauled to the Takoradi harbour for export. The Chairman of the Workers� Union of the GRCL, Mr Godwill Ntamah, told the Daily Graphic, in an interview, that stopping the haulage of bauxite had affected the revenue generation capacity of the company since that was its mainstay. He said the company had to rely solely on the haulage of manganese from Nsuta to Takoradi. That also, he said, did not help its revenue drive due to the short distance of haulage adding that it made it very difficult to generate enough revenue to pay the salaries of the workers. He said the government had promised to revamp the western rail line but not much effort was being made to ensure the revival of that stretch. Chinese loan disappointment Unfortunately, he said, the Chinese loan that was expected to be used for the revamping of the western rail line has so far failed to materialise. The financial position of the company, he said, was worsened when the Ghana Manganese Company wrote to the management of the GRCL in September this year, that due to a sharp decline in the demand for manganese on the international market, they had decided to restrict the haulage of the mineral to only four hours a day. He explained that until that time, the haulage of manganese had been done round-the-clock. Brazilian facility Though cabinet, he said, had approved a Brazilian facility which was expected to be used for the western rail line project, the management of GRCL decided to revisit the issue of the haulage of bauxite to assess the situation and to see if something could be done about it in the interim. Management, he said, therefore engaged the union in a discussion over the issue and a consensus was reached to determine the true state of the line from Tarkwa to Awaso. There was therefore the need to clear all the overgrown weeds along the rail lines to enable the engineers to take a well-informed decison. He said members of staff of the company decided to undertake the clearing exercise to show their readiness to revamp the rail system and to revive revenue generation. The weeding exercise started three days ago at Tarkwa and has currently reached Bompieso, two towns away from Tarkwa.