Transport minister Fikile Mbalula has announced measures to protect the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa’s (Prasa’s) rail infrastructure, which has been heavily damaged due to theft and vandalism.
Answering questions in parliament on Wednesday, Mbalula said Prasa has created a detailed Recovery Plan to rehabilitate and replace stolen and vandalised infrastructure.
“The affected infrastructure includes the replacement of stolen Overhead Traction Equipment (OHTE), substations, signalling, perway and stations,” he said.
Prasa will also be building concrete walls along identified rail corridors and around substations as an additional measure to improve security.
These walls are set to be ‘impenetrable’ and ‘vandal proof’, will stand up to a height of four metres, and will be reinforced with additional security measures such as electric fences and CCTV equipment.
Prasa has also re-considered its security deployment strategies, including the armed response patrol patterns, and will be hiring thousands more security guards to protect the valuable infrastructure.
“Over and above the internal security operations, Prasa will be deploying a further 5,000 guards sourced through private security providers during the month of November 2021. (This) will bolster the coverage of its infrastructure with both armed and unarmed guards based on a recent security risk assessment report.”
Transnet Freight Rail (TFR) says theft and vandalism have reached ‘unprecedented levels’; over 1,000km of copper cable was stolen between January and October 2021.
There were over 600 reported cases of vandalism and theft per month over the same time period.
TFR said that 9.4km of cable was stolen on 8 and 9 November alone.
As a consequence of rampant theft and vandalism, trains have been cancelled daily. Year to date TFR has had to cancel 1,190 trains.
“Many of the incidents take place on high traffic and high volume corridors, moving major bulk commodities for our customers.”