Prasa under fire over train collision

THE United National Transport Union (Untu) claimed the collision of two trains near Booysens station in Joburg yesterday demonstrated that the granting of a one-year safety permit to the Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa) last week had been premature.

Untu general secretary Steve Harris said one train was coming from Booysens station and the other from Faraday station. Both trains had been manually authorised to be on the route.

More than 100 people were reportedly injured in the accident.

Harris said the “latest unfortunate incident” came a few days after Untu stated it was disturbed by the decision of the Railway Safety Regulator to grant Prasa the permit to run passenger rail services until July 31 next year.

“The poorest of the poor, the commuters using these trains, should know that more that 50% of Prasa’s trains nationwide operate on manual train authorisation because the signalling systems are not working,” said Harris.

“When trains are manually authorised to continue on a route, they are more exposed to human error, as what happened (yesterday).” He claimed manual authorisation led to the collision of two trains in Elandsfontein on June 1, 2017, resulting in the death of one commuter and the injury of 55, and the collision at the nearby Geldenhuys station in January that left more than 200 commuters injured.