SABC News reports that the South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu) General Secretary Jack Mazibuko says government needs to fix the rail infrastructure to make it possible to move the transportation of goods from road to rail. Mazibuko was speaking during an engagement between Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Public Enterprises and organised labour on the governance, financial and service delivery challenges that Transnet is facing.

The South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union and Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) made various presentations to the committee. Mazibuko spoke about the transformation of the rail sector. “From us to move from road to rail, the first thing that we need to do is we need to fix the infrastructure. And let’s look at how this road freight was able to run away with murder within Transnet. We have the lines that we call a branch line.

The branch line is where Transnet was playing a role to transport your cranes, to transport at short distances, goods.” “The clients have run away. They have opted to buy trucks, they have opted to use road freight to transport their goods to the same ports, because Transport is unable to. Now those things affect the performance of Transnet,” adds Mazibuko.

by Mercedes Besent