Transport minister Fikile Mbalula may have had the best intentions when he fired the useless board at the helm of the Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa) and replaced it with an administrator in the person of Bongisizwe Mpondo. But those intentions have been tripped up by his cutting corners in the appointment process. For without approval from parliament and the National Treasury, Mpondo’s appointment is null and void.
Mbalula doubtless intended to appoint someone skilled to rescue Prasa, which has all but collapsed because of corrupt political board appointments, and poor decisions on infrastructure investment by managers. But ignoring the law and due process is the single biggest act that will undermine the administrator in his efforts to get Prasa back on track.
The point is critical. Prasa’s operations have been on the wane for a decade. The decline has accelerated in the past five years: operations scored a mere 26% success rate in terms of the board’s performance criteria in financial 2019; only 40% of its trains departed or arrived on time.
This has been devastating for the business and the economy, as Prasa is the cheapest form of transport for the low-paid working-class commuters who rely on its trains to get to work and back home daily. The cheapest train ride costs R7.50, whereas the shortest taxi ride costs at least R10. Even so, those who could barely afford the R237 monthly ticket have had to find alternative transport.
Mbalula’s flouting of the law in naming a Prasa administrator will undermine efforts to get it going again
At its peak Prasa transported more than 2.5-million passengers daily, at the lowest possible cost to themselves. For the year ended March 2019, Prasa made 209-million paying passenger trips, down from 262-million the previous year. Compare that to the 543-million paying passengers it transported in the year ended March 2014.
Passengers on Metrorail, its subsidiary urban train service, are most at risk of being dismissed from their jobs as office assistants, cleaners and security guards due to coming to work late because of constantly delayed trains. But Prasa could not wait for the economy to reject its stakeholders. This year its own operational failures have cost the jobs of at least 10,000 workers employed by its contractors.
Failure to act
In October it fired 3,000 security guards while implementing the five-year-old findings of former public protector Thuli Madonsela, who said in 2014 that it should cancel irregularly appointed contractors. For five years management failed to act. When it finally did, there were still no replacement guards for its huge and valuable infrastructure.
For two years Prasa has had no supply chain contracts in place, leaving its trains without replacement parts or maintenance contractors. As a result the 59 formerly contracted companies have been forced to retrench 3,600 employees.
One of the largest, Wictra Holdings, is in dire straits. If Prasa does not resume maintenance work on its infrastructure soon, Wictra says it will have to retrench all its remaining 2,000 employees by February. Since June the workers have had to cope with only half their monthly wage. The company has for 23 years been doing overhauls, refurbishment and maintenance for Metrorail, which remains Wictra’s only source of revenue. Smaller contractors have also laid off staff, bringing the Prasa-induced jobs bloodbath to over 10,000.
Without repairs, trains grind to a halt. Gauteng had only 59 operational trains last week. It needs at least 59 more. Mpondo has to save what’s left of Africa’s largest, and for a long time only, passenger railway service. But his appointment is null and void.
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