The United National Transport Union (UNTU) welcomes Parliaments decision to fire the Board of the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa).

“This is the first step in die right direction to prevent the crippled state owned enterprise form totally collapsing. UNTU would like to urge Parliament to take matters a step further by putting pressure on Pres. Jacob Zuma to fire Transport Minister Dipue Peters also. She did nothing to prevent or rectify the ongoing deterioration of Prasa,” says Steve Harris, General Secretary of UNTU.

The decision to dissolve the board comes after they had to brief the parliamentary portfolio committee on transport on the status of Metrorail.

The past week Members of Parliament repeatedly called for the board to be removed after it was accused of being “corrupt”. Members of the board were also severely criticised for their handling of the recalling of the former acting CEO Collins Letsoalo ’s backs to the Department of Transport after his 350% salary increase to a package of R5,9 million was exposed more than a week ago by the Sunday Times.

On Monday the portfolio committee resolved to establish an inquiry into governance challenges at Prasa.

According to the Chairperson of the Committee, Ms Dikeledi Magadzi, the resolution was not taken lightly as this seems to be the only way Prasa will be saved.

“It is important that Prasa works if we are to grow the economy and deliver on the mandate to get poor South Africans to work. As things are now, there is no sense that the board is in control of anything. It does not seem that there are controls at the entity to ensure good governance in line with legislation,” Ms Magadzi said.

Harris says the decision will have a very negative impact on the ongoing Prasa wage negotiations for a salary increase with effect of 1 April 2017.

Currently the UNTU negotiation team is having mass meetings with Union members across the country to get a mandate from them on the way forward after Prasa proposed to conditionally move from a 3% offer to a 4,5% offer. Labour are demanding a 17% increase.

“With the turn of events, the Prasa negotiation team might be left without any mandate to continue with negotiations. UNTU would like to prevent a situation where our members have to wait for the wheels of governance to turn before a wage agreement is concluded, “says Harris.

Issued by UNTU