Doubt cast on Prasa’s ability to operate

THE Railway Safety Regulator has defended its stance on terminating the ailing Prasa’s safety permit, saying that it has lost confidence in the railway company to operate without further collisions.

Last week, the regulatory body communicated its intention to revoke Prasa’s safety permit after a train-totrain collision during manual authorisation near Van Riebeeck Station in Kempton Park.

Appearing before Parliament’s portfolio committee on transport, the regulator’s acting chief executive Tshepo Kgare said there were no other remedies available to the body other than suspending Prasa’s permit.

She said the regulatory body was being lenient tp Prasa, and expected it to comply instead of approaching the court to have the suspension overturned.

“Coming back to the accident of the 4th, we focused on one narrow aspect which is the manual train authorisation. We didn’t look at everything else that concerns safety at Prasa, that was the basis of the suspension.

“It is a condition of the permit. When we issued the permit, we did indicate that they need to comply with countersigning, but because there were all sorts of issues raised by Prasa, we actually lowered the bar so much that you wonder how it is not possible to comply. We said the countersign does not have to be on every operation, but that it should happen on a daily basis,” said Kgare.

The regulatory body has cast doubt on Prasa’s ability to operate safely. She said Prasa used manual train authorisations, which should be an alternative procedure.

Between January and September, Prasa has allowed over 600 000 manual train authorisations, with about four collisions occurring as a result of trains being wrongfully manually authorised to continue on a track where another train was operating.

“We requested that supervision efforts be enhanced, and in doing that, we requested that there be countersigning on every authorisation,” said Kgare.

The Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, last week issued a supervisory order instructing Prasa to comply with the safety requirements set out by the railway regulator.