State to spend R45m to move people off tracks
The government is to spend R45m to move people who erected structures on railway tracks and rail reserves in Cape Town into temporary housing, transport minister Fikile Mbalula said on Wednesday.
Mbalula, who is responsible for the Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa), was answering questions in the National Council of Provinces. Over the lockdown, when rail services ceased and Prasa property was left unguarded, thousands of people moved onto station platforms, railways and into the railway reserve, erecting new dwellings.
The new shacks are part of an explosion of informal settlements that took place during lockdown as thousands of backyard dwellers found themselves unable to pay rent and moved onto open land. The city of Cape Town estimates that 50 new settlements have sprung up in the past year, with 30,00040,000 new shacks erected.
COURT ORDER
The Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act and state of disaster regulations require landlords who wish to remove illegal occupiers to obtain a court order and to provide alternative temporary housing. Mbalula said two court applications were in process and that the Housing Development Agency had acquired three parcels of land on which to construct 22,050 temporary structures.
Mbalula said the encroachment of people onto Prasa property had begun long before the lockdown and had been tolerated by the private security companies that guarded railway property.
“This started happening many years ago … but we are fixing that and we are going to sort it out. The majority of the people who are settling on the railway lines are coming from the Eastern Cape. What it means is that the government in terms of the law is obliged to look for alternative settlements ... Some are also coming out of backyards. They move from the backyard onto the railway lines to get attention,” he said.
Asked by MPs where the Prasa security had been at the time, he said that was “a good question”.
“It was absent. Totally absent, because when people moved onto these areas, it was allowed, there was no management. Prasa was a broken organisation and we are fixing it. The cost to fix it will run into billions of rand,” he said.
While a number of national, provincial and municipal departments and agencies were involved in the initiative to move people, Mbalula did not say how the costs would be divided between them and which department, in the end, would pick up the bill.
Railway infrastructure in the country was already in a state of collapse before the lockdown due to theft and vandalism, with Cape Town’s busiest line — the northern line, which connects the city with the Cape Flats — closed before the lockdown began. Mbalula said Prasa hoped to recover 11 passenger railway corridors by March 2022.