Ramaphosa rescues Prasa from power cuts

• Eskom was about to cut electricity supply to commuter train lines, due to agency’s unpaid bills

President Cyril Ramaphosa stepped in on Wednesday to prevent Eskom from cutting the electricity supply to commuter train lines, due to unpaid bills by the Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa).

The crisis at Prasa is the latest in the spiral of debt in which the government is caught as failing and broke state entities and municipalities default on payments to one another.

Had the termination of train services gone ahead, thousands of commuters would have been left stranded.

Trains are the biggest mode of transport available to commuters in the urban areas of Gauteng, the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, and according to Prasa, it transports more than 2.5-million people every day.

It is not clear which lines faced interruption on Wednesday as Prasa would not answer detailed questions.

It is believed that Prasa owed Eskom about R250m, but neither Eskom nor Prasa would

confirm this. Prasa chair Khanyisile Kweyama said on Thursday that Prasa has now made payment and “the matter is resolved”.

Ramaphosa and public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan were alerted to the pending cut-off by Western Cape premier Alan Winde, who said he was advised by Eskom “as a courtesy” that it intended to cut the power to one of the city’s lines within two hours.

“Eskom was doing exactly what it should do but the problem was that there was only two hours notice for the people of the province. It was also not a good thing to happen for the image of SA while the president’s investment conference was under way,” Winde said.

Cape Town’s economy and road system are under enormous strain due to the crisis at Prasa, which has caused thousands of commuters to move to bus transport. The Western Cape government is processing a bill which will give it oversight powers over Prasa, which reports to the national minister of transport.

Transport minister Fikile Mbalula, who established a war room for Prasa after his appointment in May, gave an update of its achievements at a press conference on Monday. Mbalula said that on-time train performance had improved to 63% in the afternoon peak times, from about 49% when he launched the performance improvement intervention in August.

While he acknowledged that Prasa is not yet where he wants it to be, he did not mention the cash-flow crisis, which has rendered it unable to pay its bills. Kweyama said that the cause of the crisis is “declining revenue at Metrorail”, which is Prasa’s commuter rail division.

At the end of 2018/2019, Prasa made a R1.5bn loss as costs exceeded revenue.

Falling passenger numbers due to frequent cancellations of services have continued to weigh on Prasa during 2019. Kweyama has been charged with turning this around.

The agency was also severely affected by state capture and former CEO Lucky Montana was fired in 2015. A public protector’s report in 2015 pointed to widespread corruption. A Treasury forensic report into 216 contracts found that 13 were above board. The public protector’s report also set aside a number of complaints that still required investigation.

Public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane failed to investigate most of these, and new information. She published a report in April that was described as a whitewash by commuter activist group #UniteBehind.

The lobby group this week announced that it would take Mkhwebane to court for her failure to investigate.