Growing scrap-metal industry and poor policing derail train networks
• Without big changes, Prasa will find it difficult to get full service back on track
Trains are dangerous. Fixed tracks make them prone to collision and their steel bulk suggests an inexorable momentum that puts the law in the laws of Newtonian physics. But mass and velocity are also the virtues of trains.
Metrorail, which is operated by the Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa), transports at least 1.7-million commuters each working day and Shosholoza Meyl (also operated by Prasa) moves 4-million passengers a year. This means accidents and fatalities are likely. But what is an acceptable statistic?
Recent data presented in a Council for Scientific and Industrial Research study shows that SA’s rail-safety record is off-thec harts unacceptable. The EU, US, Australia, South Korea and Canada all report less than one death per 1-million train kilometres in a range of 0.16 to 0.63.
In SA, 5.85 people die for every 1-million train kilometres.
Straight comparisons, however, do not necessarily provide the best insights. A closer look at the details of SA’s statistics may be more revealing.
SA’s rail safety receives special attention from the government through its agency, the Railway Safety Regulator), which has the authority to inspect, intervene and enforce changes to train working rules.
It also produces an annual State of Safety report, which shows alarming trends, most notably at Prasa.
A collision between a Shosholoza Meyl passenger train and a lorry three weeks ago resulted in the deaths of 22 people, with 251 injured. In the two weeks that followed, there were four more Metrorail incidents in which two people died and at least 220 were injured.
These incidents confirm the regulator ’s statistics for 2016-17, which show the incident count (at all operators) down 5% at 4,066, but the number of fatalities up 8% to 495, with 2,079 people injured (down 10%). Collisions and derailments had declined by 9% for the year, but events at level crossings, such as the one near Kroonstad, had increased sharply — up 27% to 119, the regulator reported.
Alarming in the report is the incongruous 13 percentagepoint difference between the declining number of occurrences and the rising number of related fatalities, indicating a change in the severity and/or nature of the incidents.
The reported railway incident tally for 2018 is six major incidents. At this rate, there should be about 130 similar incidents in the year ahead, but that number would profoundly understate the reality. At the prevailing downward trend, the regulator’s statistics show at least 4,000 safety-related incidents may be expected.
As far as changes to SA’s railway operations go, the creation of the Railway Safety Regulator may be one of the most appropriate. Before 2005, when it began its work, railway operators made their own working rules, investigated safety-related incidents themselves and were accountable to only themselves and common law.
Occupational safety legislation, for instance, did not provide for passengers and the public. Now, railway entities must obtain safety permits before undertaking any operation.
But not all the changes since the 1980s have led to safer railways. The evolution of the South African Railways and Harbours to today’s independent stateowned railway operators resulted in 35 years of underinvestment and neglect, and bickering over assets and maintenance. As part of its motivation for state funding, Prasa told Parliament in 2013 the prevailing conditions were unsustainable.
One of the unintended consequences of the changes was the incorporation of the railway police unit into the regular police in 1986, which led to the breakdown in railway security. The United National Transport Union (Untu) says this has caused a spike in assaults, derailments and collisions, and called for the reintroduction of a dedicated railway police service.
Prasa, the regulator and the CSIR’s report all identify crime as a major contributor to “operational occurrences”. They do not attribute injuries and fatalities directly to “occurrences”, listing instead the leading causes (outside of assaults) as collisions, derailments and signalling problems. But the fact is, theft causes derailments, collisions and signalling problems.
When the railway police broke up in 1986, members were dispatched to where the regime needed all the help it could get to suppress antiapartheid protests. This meant branch lines became vulnerable to thieves, who mainly targeted three pieces of equipment: fishplates, which connect rails to each other laterally; clip fasteners, which tie rails to sleepers; and signalling gear. Fishplates and clips are made of steel and are sought-after in the scrapmetal industry.
This is what happened in Germiston last Wednesday and on the Cape’s central line last Thursday. According to Untu it happens all the time, as scrapmetal dealers confirm.
Vernon Annandale, an East Rand dealer who is prepared to go on record, says the “street trade” sells a lot of this type of stolen equipment, for which they are paid between R1.80/kg and R2.40/kg.
A 2017 report by Tutwa Consulting estimates that up to 400,000 small-time collectors operate in the scrap-metal industry, which may explain the rising trend in security-related incidents, which stands at 6,379 for 20116-17, up 13% from the previous period. The Railway Safety Regulator’s report says it is the highest since 2010-11.
The branch lines had been abandoned as too dangerous after the railway police withdrew, and thieves started stealing large sections of track.
In one incident near Elliot in the Eastern Cape, 10km of rail was carted away in a single night, suggesting that a highly organised and well-capitalised gang was responsible. Railway workers and at least one senior railway official have been implicated in this theft.
Prasa spokeswoman Nana Zenani says the regulator’s ban on manual signalling after the Germiston incident affected about 2.6-million passenger trips across three provinces.
Gauteng alone undertakes 1.5-million passenger trips each day. “The order would have pushed all those passengers onto road transport.”
Some of the passengers assaulted a train driver in Cleveland (near Germiston) who had been ordered to stop the train because a signal was out, Untu told a crime conference last week. The driver, Johan Beukes, begged his controller to get the train moving or he would be killed and the train set alight.
“The use of manual authorisation … arises out of the ongoing attack on the rail infrastructure by thieves,” says Zenani.
The Railway Safety Regulator reports that theft has risen 18% to 4,379 incidents. Metrorail says the number of scrap dealers in Bonteheuwel in the Cape has risen sharply, where the central line to Cape Town is chronically disrupted by theft.
The five places where the greatest number of incidents were reported — Germiston (38), Elandsfontein (25), Pretoria (23), Kempton Park (21) and Doornfontein (21) — are in areas with a high density of small-scale scrap-metal dealers.
There is good reason for their proliferation. The global scrapmetal trade is worth $77.8bn a year, according to the Tutwa study. SA, a net exporter, contributes about 2%.
Prasa’s newly appointed acting CEO, Cromet Molepo, announced a “crackdown” on theft last week. He said at Untu’s conference it was “a crisis” and had to change. What must change is not yet known, but it is clear it must involve Prasa leadership, the police and the scrapmetal industry.