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The United National Transport Union (UNTU) calls on Dr Blade Nzimande, Minister of Transport, to intervene and suspend the services of Metrorail, a division of the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) until the rail operator can provide a safe and reliable service.
 
“UNTU warned that passenger trains are death trains and that the situation is life threatening. The Minister, the Railway Safety Regulator and Prasa ignored us. Had they listened, one commuter would not have died, and more than 150 commuters would not have been injured in the latest collision,” says Sonja Carstens, spokesperson of UNTU.
 
This comes after President Cyril Ramaphosa informed the Presidential Job Summit at the Gallagher Estate in Midrand today that he had kept to his promise earlier in his State of the Nation address to turnaround state-owned enterprises (SOE) and to root out corruption in them.
 
Carstens says the situation at Prasa took a turn for the worse under Nzimande’s hand. Although the Minister have been acknowledged UNTU’s request to meet with him after his appointment in February, his office simply does not respond to set a date after repeatedly being asked to do so.
 
According to Carstens every aspect of the latest coalition between Metrorail trains 0659 and 0663 at Van Riebeeckpark on the route between Pretoria and Johannesburg can be contributed to Prasa inability to provide a safe and reliable service.
 
“Trains 0663 broke-down due to Prasa’s lack of maintenance and unavailability of spaces due to poorly managed procurement procedures on route on Pretoria at 17:55. The train driver informed the train control office not to allow another train on the route. But five minutes later Train 0665 collided with it after it was manually authorised to continue on the route.
 
“Prasa is not able to replace vandalised and broken signals and manual authorisations, the cause off all the coalitions in Gauteng over the last two years, have become the norm. Prasa is not able to implement manual authorisations as it should due to the high level of vacancies in critical skills positions. This is a disaster,” says Carstens.
 
UNTU is in the process of approaching the Court to apply for relief to protect its members and innocent commuters after the RSR decided to issue Prasa with a safety permit that is valid till the end of August 2019.
 
“It the Union is finalising its comprehensive timeline of life-threatening incidents nationwide, but we are unable to finalise it because there is another serious incident every second day,” says Carstens.
 
The Union extends its sincerest condolences to the family and friends of the commuter who passed on in the latest incident and wishes the injured commuters a speedy recovery.
 

 
Issued by The United National Transport Union