A Prasa locomotive passing through a bridge from Pretoria station to Akasia station (north of Pretoria). Picture: Oupa Mokoena (ANA)
The Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) said yesterday that it would need the government to fork out another R6 billion to get its operations in working order.
This while its capex of R12.9 billion this year, R13.5bn next year and R4bn the year after would be tied down in refurbishment of infrastructure and replenishment of the rail fleet.
Appearing before Parliament's portfolio committee on transport, Prasa CEO Hishaam Emeran said the agency was seeing a slow recovery in passenger numbers, which had fallen from 50 million per year to peak at about 15 million at present, a situation worsened by the badly dilapidated infrastructure vandalised by scrap-metal and copper thieves.
“There are two issues that are top priority for the organisation right now: the first is the cost of security to secure our infrastructure and the other is that the recovery programme and passenger numbers are still low. We anticipate recovery over the next five years. We will need funding for operational support, most of it at the start of the new financial year,” Emeran said.
Prasa has seen to the swift replacement of board chairperson Leonard Ramatlakane, dismissed for the alleged unauthorised use of a luxury residential property reserved for travelling Prasa executives in Newlands, Cape Town, with former PetroSA CEO Nosizwe Nokwe-Macamo.
Emeran said Prasa was also heavily constrained by the inter-charges it had with its counterpart Transnet, whose debt, though settled for now, still weighed heavily on Prasa's margins.
Prasa, as at its last reporting period, owed Transnet in inter-charges roughly R2.3bn, which was partially settled through an off-set agreement from what Transnet had to pay Prasa.
However, Emeran said yesterday that the amount had been settled through some contingency funds.
He told Parliament that Prasa had also entered into an agreement with the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) to conduct lifestyle audits at the entity from the senior executives, middle management and throughout the supply chain to ensure that elements of corruption were uprooted.
He said the entity had also made progress in clearing the issue of 3 000 ghost workers that had weighed on the salary bill.
Meanwhile, Prasa said it had spent R13.5bn largely on repairing infrastructure that had suffered years of vandalism. While work on the recovery of corridors would continue, the entity would pay particular attention to rehabilitating its signalling systems.
It had reached 59% of its performance targets and seen the recovery of 13 more critical corridors for a total of 18 usable corridors. The target is to have 32 corridors operating by the end of the 2023/24 financial year, signalling an 80% recovery. There currently are eight functional corridors in the Western Cape, six in Gauteng and four in KwaZulu-Natal.
Emeran said along with the corridor recovery were plans to increase the number of blue trains, with a target of at least 15 added by the end of the current financial year for a total of a 215 trains fleet.
Prasa was adding at least 60 trains a year from a contract with a local original equipment manufacturer based in Nigel.
Further localisation could be seen in the employment of 60 co-operatives around the country to assist with the maintenance and cleanliness of rail lines as a means for communities to buy into the ownership of the rail infrastructure, Emeran said.
Prasa said it was still beleaguered with a large percentage of its rail networks clogged by informal settlements, and it had cost more than R111 million to reclaim pathways. So far about 900 out of 4 000 shacks built directly on the rail line had been shifted temporarily.
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