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BL Premium reports that business and labour are counting the cost of the rise in theft and vandalism on state-owned railway operator Transnet Freight Rail’s (TFR’s) line linking Gauteng and Durban.
TFR blames the escalation of theft and vandalism along the 740km-long container corridor, which links the Port of Durban with City Deep station in Johannesburg, for the 75% reduction in operating capacity over the past week. However, unions and businesses say continuous and desperate pleas to the state entity to halt the destruction of the rail network, particularly in the container corridor, have yielded minimum results. TFR is used by its customers to transport crucial commodities such as coal and iron ore from rail to port in SA and its neighbours. The container corridor is used to transport agricultural and automotive goods, grain, fuel, chemicals, coal, manganese and chrome. John Perreira of the United National Transport Union (Untu) pointed out that TFR was already operating below capacity due to a shortage of locomotives, poor maintenance and vandalism and theft of infrastructure, costing its customers billions of rand in potential revenue due to throttled shipments. “The workers are a bit unsure of what the future is ... there is a bit of uncertainty if the container is not profitable then job security is a concern,” Perreira indicated. Representing 24,992 members at the Transnet bargaining council, Untu raised the alarm earlier in May over the continuous copper cable theft on the container rail corridor. On Thursday, furniture chain Lewis CEO Johan Enslin noted frequent problems on the Durban-Johannesburg line and said: “It would be great if we can get better service delivery and some return for the taxes that we are paying.”
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Thando Maeko & Katharine Child at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)
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