Question NW1518 to the Minister of Transport

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06 June 2022 - NW1518

Profile picture: Sithole, Mr KP

Sithole, Mr KP to ask the Minister of Transport

Whether, given that the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) is in a dire financial position, as it is not generating sufficient revenue to cover its operating costs as per his utterances during the virtual meeting of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts on 29 March 2022 and, following the recent conviction of a taxi driver for arson in Eerste River who stated that his motives were purely to generate more business for the taxi industry, his department has plans in place to tackle the issues of (a) Prasa operations and (b) the taxi industry, given that this is not an isolated incident and it has the potential to happen again; if not, why not, in each case; if so, what are the full, relevant details in each case?

Reply:

a) PRASA operations are receiving increased attention from the Department in a number of ways:

  1. In terms of the Shareholder Compact and Corporate Plan Prasa submits quarterly reports to the Department as a monitoring mechanism to track progress in key deliverables signed by the Minister and the Board of Control;
  2. Quarterly meetings are held to present progress reports to the Department of Transport;
  3. The Capital Project Steering Committee (CPSC) has been established and is convened quarterly to monitor progress in the implementation of CAPEX;

In addition to the above mechanisms the CPSC conducts oversight on the projects to verify information submitted.

b) PRASA has made strides in implementing the Integrated Security Plan launched by the Minister in October 2020. Security deployments have been made across identified hotspots.

Crimes and the type of crimes vary within PRASA. Constant intelligence and crime operations shows the different modus operandi within the different regions. When looking at the various crime data and information gathered, it shows how different regions will experience different types of crimes.

Intelligence driven projects, and criminal syndication penetration operations, have yielded great results. This would need to be intensified by strengthening PRASA joint operations with both the State security agency and SAPS crime intelligence.

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