Women and children may get their own train carriages
#UniteBehind says PRASA board chair has undertaken to introduce chaperoned carriages
The Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA) might reintroduce “chaperone carriages” for children by August, says #UniteBehind.
In a statement on Monday, #UniteBehind said, “Women commuters face specific threats to their safety. This must be considered and prioritised by PRASA.”
The organisation said that it had met with senior management at PRASA and newly appointed PRASA board chairperson Khanyisile Kweyama on Friday. The organisation said PRASA made “a number of crucial undertakings” which included the reintroduction of chaperoned carriages for children.
GroundUp was unable to determine why this service was discontinued years ago.
“[Kweyama] herself has undertaken to make sure that chaperone carriages for children are reintroduced in August. Chaperone carriages will provide children with a safe space and will be accompanied by volunteers cleared by PRASA,” it said.
#UniteBehind has also called on the rail agency to have separate carriages for women and children.
But PRASA spokesperson Nana Zenani said #UniteBehind’s request for special carriages forms part of “ongoing discussions and nothing further”.
#UniteBehind as well as the Women’s Legal Centre (WLC) and Equal Education Law Centre have been collecting cases “to compel PRASA to develop a safety plan” for women and children.
#UniteBehind said that despite the efforts to tackle state capture within the agency and the appointment of a “competent board”, the rail service remained in a state of crisis. “We believe that a cooperative relationship with PRASA is possible,” it said.
Next: Minister suspends Equal Education programmes
Previous: Land occupiers in Parkwood say they’ve waited 16 years
Letters
Dear Editor
The service of metrorail in Tembisa is very much poor. People are loosing their job due to arriving late at work every day because of the train.
There have been a problem at Birchley for the past three months and they don't solve it. We buy monthly tickets but we use taxi because of poor service from Prasa, can they please privatize it.
© 2018 GroundUp.
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.