There’s something fishy with the minutes of the safety meetings at the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA)
Steve Harris, General Secretary of the United National Transport Union (UNTU), says PRASA is blatantly ignoring the unions urgent requests to provide it with copies of the minutes of its quarterly regional and departmental safety meeting for the year 2016.
UNTU also wants to know who is PRASA’s health-and-safety-representatives in the regions to assist the union in determining if PRASA is taking the increasingly deteriorating safety situation at passenger railway stations seriously.
“In spite of promises by Collins Letsoalo, acting Group Chief Executive of PRASA, to the media at an emergency press conference in August that the passenger railway operator will be interacting and consulting with various stakeholders to finalise his turnaround strategy by the end of this month, no communication has been forthcoming.
“This is just another example of the empty promises made by Letsoalo. He bit of more than he can chew when the agreed to try and save the collapsing entity, tackle the many operational challenges he is faced with and improve services at the same time. He was appointed with a mandate to stabilize the parastatal, but we don’t see that happening” says Harris.
UNTU is in the process of consulting with its legal team to bring an application to ask the courts to force PRASA to step up security measures at railway stations. The Union will now declare a dispute against PRASA’s refusal to disclose information terms of section 16 of the Labour Relations Act.
For enquiries phone Harris on 082 566 5516.
Issued on behalf of UNTU by Sonja Carstens, Media and Liaison Officer. For UNTU Press Releases e-mail sonja@untu.co.za or phone 082 463 6806.
