The Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) on Tuesday put its losses due to arson attacks on its Metrorail trains at R636 million over the past three years.
Arson attacks on Metrorail trains lose closing in on R700m. Prasa says it is working with police and intelligence agencies to understand why trains are being set alight and how to curb the attacks.
Briefing parliament’s portfolio committee on transport, Prasa chief executive Sibusiso Sithole said 71% of the arson attacks had taken place in the Western Cape, with losses in the province due to gutted train coaches standing at R451.6 million.
Sithole said the causes for the burning of trains were “multi-faceted” and needed a “multi-pronged approach”. Several strategies were being put in place, he added.
“We are now at the level where proof of concept for a project to look at installing cameras and sensors in trains is going well. This is really going to assist us in identifying who the perpetrators are,” said Sithole.
Prasa said it was working with police and intelligence agencies to understand why trains are being set alight and how to curb the attacks. The rail agency also wants to improve the efficiency of its internal security as well as redesigning the seating of trains.
“There’s also a move to remove what we call combustible material, especially for seats. Some of the seats can take less than a minute to burn which consequently means to burn the whole train can actually be quite easy,” said Sithole.
In the past few weeks, the Western Cape has been hit hard by arson attacks which have caused major delays for commuters.
Source: The Citizen
