The United National Transport Union (UNTU) welcomes the decision of the Railway Safety Regulator (RSR) to revoke the Prohibition Directive issued against it that halted operations a month ago.
UNTU never agreed with the RSR’s decision to suspend the services of Shosholoza Meyl after the regulator concluded its preliminary investigation into the collision of a Shosholoza Train 17005 and a Transnet Freight Rail (TFR) Train 8139 at Horizon Station in Roodepoort in Johannesburg on 12 February 2020.
“UNTU remains of the view that this incident occurred because the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa), the operator of Shosholoza Meyl, did not adhere to the Gauteng North High Court Order issued on 12 October 2020 to have a supervisor present in the train control office (TCO) to monitor the conversation between a TCO and a train driver when manual authorisation is being used.
“In this case the Shosholoza Meyl train was authorised by the TCO to continue on the route where the TFR train was stationary.
“This is exactly what happened during the Mountain View train collision on 8 January 2019 when two Metrorail passenger trains collided at Mountain View Station in Pretoria. Four people died and 620 were injured. Then the RSR found that Prasa is in contravention of its own standard operating procedures, as well as the directives of the regulator, but did not revoked Prasa’s safety operating permit to operate Metrorail,” says Harris.
The RSR assured UNTU that they had several meetings with Prasa and that one of the operating conditions Prasa now needs to adhere to, is to have 24/7 supervisor monitoring in TCO’s. This will prevent incidents from occurring in off-peak times when manual authorisation is being used.
“According to the RSR this aspect where lacking in court order as the orders addressed policies that needed to be formalised, approved and implemented, but not the practical implications in the workplace.
“One of the solutions to the continues problem would be the migration of all Prasa’s TCO offices to the Gauteng Nerve Centre (GNC) in Kaalfontein, next to Tembisa in Kempton Park. This centre was officially opened in 2015 but have never been utilised to its full potential due to the backlog in the modernisation of the signalling system. To date the management of Prasa has not yet entered discussions with organised labour on the impact of the movement of TCO offices on workers,” says Harris.
The court order of Judge Cassim Sardiwalla directing the safety operating permit of Prasa was also suspended. Prasa managed to convince judge Sardiwalla that the state-owned enterprise complied with all the provisions of the order and submitted all the plan required from it.
The Court ruled that the RSR reserves the right to approach the court again if Prasa fails to comply.
Issued on behalf of UNTU by Sonja Carstens, Deputy-General Secretary: Media, Liaison and Communication. For UNTU press releases phone 082 463 6806 or e-mail sonja@untu.co.za.
