The Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) says although it remains focused on improving the rail system throughout the country, it cannot do so without government intervening to stem rampant criminality.
Workers belonging to the Federation of Unions of South Africa (Fedusa) and the United National Transport Union (UNTU) are expected to embark on marches in Durban, Johannesburg, Cape Town and Pretoria on Friday morning.
The workers, who will hand over a memorandum of grievances to provincial government offices, are demanding improved rail services including the safety of commuters on trains.
The unions are also calling on President Cyril Ramaphosa to urgently intervene in the matter.
Prasa Spokesperson Nana Zenani says the workers’ demands are legitimate.
Zenani says, “We do agree on a lot of the issues that they raised for instance this morning (Friday). We’ve had cable theft between Pretoria and Hercules. So there needs to be a different kind of intervention. We’ve updated our security contracts and in fact we getting new security teams to come on board in August.”
“In Cape Town specifically, we had security interventions coming where we had about 60 additional security teams, those particular security teams were attacked by machine-gun wielding gangs, so it’s getting to a point where our mandate has ended as Prasa in terms of what we can do, but again the focus for Prasa is the modernisation of the system but we cannot do that when there is rampant criminality on our system,” she adds.
Metrorail says there have been more reports of vandalism affecting trains on the Northern and Southern lines in Cape Town.
Commuters on the Cape Flats say they have decided to seek alternative transport on Friday due to a number of cancellations.
At Nonqubela Train Station, one of the busiest in Khayelitsha, commuters made their way to nearby taxi ranks. Only one train operated on Friday morning.
One Khayelitsha commuter, Tim Mwaku says he did not know that trains would be cancelled on Friday.
Mitchells Plain taxi rank was also busy due to a high number of commuters seeking alternative transport.
Workers union Fedusa and UNTU will march to Parliament on Friday to call for improved safety on trains and an end to vandalism.
