The United Association of South Africa (UASA) welcomes the publication of Transnet’s draft network statement, to be gazetted for public consultation and comments, as a good move towards reforming the country’s 21 200km rail network.
The rail system infrastructure has been collapsing for over a decade as the government failed to maintain the rail network, resulting in a maintenance backlog estimated at R200 billion.
Over the past years, Transnet has relied on taxpayers’ bailouts and still failed to achieve basic operational needs to ensure that the entity did not succumb to failure in the long run. The government’s focused efforts to reform the country’s rail network by involving the private sector will assist in minimising corruption and mismanagement of funds within the entity. This will also ensure that products and commodities reach our harbours for export on time. Several mining companies are currently in retrenchment mode because of the inability to get their commodities to our harbours for export.
Transnet’s draft network statement plans to liberalise rail by selling rail slots to third parties or private sector players. This allows them to introduce their electric locomotives, independently rail their goods to markets, and move traffic off-road and on to rail. However, the SOE sets the terms and conditions for how its customers and industry use and pay for its infrastructure to rail their goods to markets.
This process will be managed by a newly established infrastructure manager office.
Once the network statement is open for public consultation and comments, we urge fellow South Africans to actively participate and comment on the statement, and use this opportunity to reclaim the enterprise to ensure the country’s logistics status is revived.
UASA hopes that this approach will help revitalise our economy.
* Abigail Moyo, spokesperson of the trade union UASA.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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