PARALLELS AND CONTINUITY: THE SARCC AND ESKOM
By: Gareth van Onselen
Delivering his 2008 budget vote speech for the department of transport, Minister Jeff Radebe announced that, among many other things, government would be spending R18 billion on passenger rail infrastructure over the medium term (the next 3 - 5 years), mainly because of the 2010 FIFA World Cup which, according to the Minister, serves “as a catalyst for transport transformation”.
(Of course, the immediate response that comes to mind is, why do we need a catalyst to maintain or upgrade our infrastructure? Surely that is something a government does with or without ‘catalysts’? Nevetheless.)
The R18 billion will no doubt be gratefully received and welcomed by all concerned. And so it should. It is desperately needed. In elaborating on the allocation, the Minister stated:
“Government has increased funding for passenger rail transport services to the tune of R18 billion over the MTEF. This funding is vital for the turnaround strategy being implemented by the South African Rail Commuter Corporation (SARCC) aimed at immediate and significant improvements through the upgrading of the current rolling stock fleet as well as the upgrading of the signalling infrastructure.
“I am proud to say that over the past 18 months, the SARCC has been able to upgrade and take through its general overhaul programme over 790 coaches which have since been deployed back into service. The SARCC has already committed another 700 coaches to be refurbished in this current financial year at an estimated cost of almost R2 billion in this regard. This is vital because a key factor in the deterioration of rail services has been under-investment in rolling stock.”
But that is putting a gloss on things. While the SARCC has indeed managed to upgrade some of its fleet, that is just part of the problem. And R18 billion is certainly significant, but by no means enough. Consider this extract from a presentation by Lucky Motana - SARCC CEO - to the transport portfolio committee in March this year (just over two months ago):
(This excerpt is based on the Parliamentary Monitoring Group’s audio recording and a few words were indistinct. It is long, but it is worth quoting in full.)
“Despite all of these improvements that I talk about - and I think they are important improvements, if we look at where we are when we came last year in February to report on our plans and our budget, I think that’s quite an improvement - commuter rail, Chair, remains on a knife-edge. We are still facing very difficult conditions and I think that I wouldn’t want to mislead the committee to say that we have turned a corner.
“It will take us another year or two for us to say we are now in a very stable environment, we can take this thing to a higher level. Chair, as you you’ve seen in Tshwane, we just need two Tshwane incidents, two incidents similar to Tshwane, and it will bring this service down, that’s how fragile, that’s how at the edge this service finds itself and I think that there are a lot of things that a lot of people, including government, want us to do that we are not able to do. We have been asked for example, Chair, to say, can you introduce, improve on the frequency before 2010, which means more trains every two minutes, the current signalling system does not allow us to do so. If we want to do that, Chair, we really should [indistinct] within that system; we also know that there is not enough rolling stock to carry people, we also know that the communication system between the drivers and our train control centres is quite weak – all of those are a good indicator of the fact that the service remains on a knife edge; that people travel under very difficult conditions, overcrowding is the fea
| Posted on 10/6/2008
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