Cape Town - After years of mismanagement, tender irregularities and in some instances corruption that affected train services, the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) seems to be on the right track.
Prasa has reopened the Pretoria Pienaarsrivier corridor after reconstructing the rail tracks and refurbishing the infrastructure. This followed vandalism and theft caused in part by the removal of security guards in 2019.
The corridor covers areas such as Koedoespoort, Silverton, Eersterust, Eerste Fabrieke, Mamelodi and Pienaarspoort stations spread across 53km and 16 train stations. Prasa refurbished bridges and platforms, restored the power supply and added new technology, among other things.
The agency also announced that other corridors would be reopened before the end of the year. This includes the Soweto-Johannesburg, Johannesburg-Pretoria, Tembisa-Johannesburg and the Cape Town to Langa routes, among others. This is commendable indeed.
It is an open secret that the majority of the working class and poor rely heavily on train services (after the taxis) for an obvious reason – reasonable fares. Even though the train service is hardly reliable, it does take most workers to work on time, in most cases, and is cheaper. This, in turn, boosts our economic growth and reduces poverty.
While Prasa’s work is notable, it should do more to speed up the reconstruction of the other rail corridors.
It should allow hawkers on board its new trains as part of job creation and poverty alleviation. It is insensitive in this economic environment for Prasa to deny hawkers the opportunity to eke out a living inside its trains.
Most importantly, Prasa should work with the police to get to the bottom of the massive theft and destruction of its rail infrastructure during the lockdown. It should also explain why it cancelled or did not renew the contract of its security service providers, who took that decision, and why?
The Prasa board should take action against executives and any other person who was party to such a costly move. Speeding up the roll-out plans, modernising the service, accommodating hawkers and applying consequence management against those who exposed the infrastructure to theft and vandalism are actions that must be carried out to take Prasa to greater heights. There should be no short cuts or holy cows.
Cape Times