Cape Town - The Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa) on Thursday took the parliamentary standing committee on public accounts on a site visit of the Cape Flats line.
Prasa said on April 3 that “the relocation of the illegal settlements on the railway line is the remaining obstacle to the full rehabilitation and restoration of service in the entirety of the Central Line”.
“As was previously communicated, the relocation process will take place in two phases, with Phase 1 being to relocate approximately 1 254 structures located near Langa Station, within the railway reserve.
“Phase 2 of the relocation process is targeting to relocate approximately 3 688 informal dwellers at Philippi Station and 253 illegal dwellers at the Khayelitsha Station,” they said.
On Thursday, regional manager, Raymond Maseko said: “What we’ve been able to successfully deliver is the line that runs from Nyanga all the way to Cape Town, connecting 11 of the 31 stations”.
“The rails that you are seeing today are new rails that have been laid – there was nothing – there are still areas on the network where the rail is still missing on the line that I will indicate to you,” Maseko said.
A heavy security presence including private security, law enforcement, police services were at the site visit which included MPs Mkhuleko Hlengwa, Ntombovuyo Veronica Mentor, Sakhumzi Stoffels Somyo, Robert Alfred Lees and Alexandra Jennifer Beukes.
Answering questions from MPs regarding security, extortion rackets, tender hijacking, and the numerous delays that have hindered access to train services yesterday, Group CEO Hishaam Emeran, said: “Structures have been established, the implementation of this protocol has been signed already. When we come to the hearing we will raise the challenge that took us from where we were 12 months ago, to where we are today.”
Hlengwa as they moved to the next platform said there was no money to be used “willy nilly sibonga, nkanjani” to fund the reconstruction of the line.
“It’s very important that we get security right, the security needs are bound to increase as you recover as you bring in more operations, so where you are now might not be necessarily where you need to be, so we need that holistically to understand that we are not going to find ourselves at square one, again because this one falls squarely on the shoulders of that board,” he said.