GroundUp reports that the CEO of the Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa), Zolani Matthews, told MPs on Wednesday that they were building a rail system “that is definitely going to be a world-class system.”
Deputy Transport Minister Sindisiwe Chikunga led the Prasa delegation, alongside Prasa chairperson Leonard Ramatlakane and Matthews, to brief the National Council of Provinces’ Select Committee on Transport on the agency’s plans to fix its collapsing rail infrastructure. Matthews took the committee through rail infrastructure projects underway in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, and the Western Cape – the “priority corridor recovery programmes”. He said Prasa was talking to rail experts from Germany and France, so that “our standards meet the standards they should be benchmarked against”. Prasa suffered large-scale looting of infrastructure after private security companies were withdrawn from service without a replacement plan in November 2019. As a result, Prasa has to repair and replace an enormous amount of infrastructure, including substations, signalling cable and equipment, telecommunications lines, and perway across all its priority corridors. These projects are expected to be completed in 2022. Matthews said that Prasa was using “the latest technology” to frustrate would-be vandals, including bank-like security doors in substations and switching to low-copper cables. He also indicated that Prasa was working to a December 2022 deadline for the full resumption of service on Cape Town’s Central Line, contingent on the successful removal of the informal settlements and perway rehabilitation.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by James Stent at GroundUp
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