Mbalula: ‘Metrorail repair costs totalled R1-billion in two years’ [video]

On Wednesday, Transport Minister, Fikile Mbalula was at the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa’s (Prasa) depot, in Braamfontein, engaging with personnel about the fight against Metrorail arson attacks.

The minister’s visit comes weeks after a Metrorail locomotive caught fire at the depot, in Johannesburg. As reported by EWN in December, no passengers or Metrorail staff members were injured in the incident.

While the incident is the subject of an ongoing investigation, arson was suspected.

Fikile Mbalula: R90-million down the drain in fixing arson trains

Mbalula, who was at the Braamfontein depot to report back on the work being done to fix the railway transit system, indicated that R90-million of the fiscal budget has already been used to repair Metrorail trains that were targeted in arson attacks.

“These trains, through financial fiscus money, are going to be replaced. R90-million — or something — money has gone down the drain. Now, it can’t be business as usual,” he charged at the depot’s officials”

Mbalula challenged the officials to be more proactive in assisting authorities with the investigation and nabbing those behind these arson attacks.

“We come here for cameras and then it’s good, we look good, it’s fine. But what do we do about our state? That’s what I am talking about. That we are not just here [for fun],” he added.

PRASA BRAAMFONTEIN STAGING YARD

Trains were burned down here in Johannesburg – we must account for this and arrest those who are responsible.

They burn the trains so they can steal copper cables #FixingTransport pic.twitter.com/03wrv9vbHk

— Minister of Transport |Mr Fix (@MbalulaFikile) January 15, 2020

‘Prasa is a broken organisation’

Mbalula admitted that rebuilding the railway transit system means that things need to be reset at Prasa, a state-owned entity on the verge of collapse.

“Prasa has suffered blows from many years of mismanagement and deteriorating corporate governance. Today it is a broken organization, struggling to provide an efficient commuter and passenger rail service,” he said.

He added that the war room he established in August 2019 was the foundation from which the Ministry of Transport was going to rebuild the state parastatal and restore it to its former pride.

In 2019 alone, Prasa incurred R364-million in repair costs, caused by arson, vandalism of power stations, public disorder, train collisions or floods.

In two years, this total scraped the R1-billion mark.

“While Prasa may be broken, we have a robust plan to turn it around. Having realised this, we approached Cabinet to institute a more aggressive approach of placing the entity under Administration and we appointed Mr [Bongiziwe] Mpondo as an Administrator,” Mbalula said.