The approval of 100 law enforcement officers to focus on rail commuter safety and to protect infrastructure goes before a City mayoral committee today.
Expected to be deployed at the end of September at a cost of R48 million, they will have to help answer what mayoral committee member for transport Brett Herron calls the “R50 million question” – the cost of the recent spate of rail-related arson attacks. Who is the “sinister force at work” to destroy the railway system, Herron and everyone affected is asking.
Perhaps the suspect who attempted to torch a train at Cape Town station on Tuesday can make their task easier by shedding light on who the mastermind is. According to Metrorail, platforms 13 and 14 had just been reopened following a fire that gutted two carriages on Saturday when the suspect set a train seat alight.
“Employees managed to extinguish the fire on one of the carriage seats before significant damage could be done. Police and protection services officials were on the scene almost immediately and managed to detain a suspect,” Metrorail said.
Commenting on the recruitment of the 100 officers, Herron said yesterday: “What goes before the committee tomorrow is the creation of 100 jobs so we can recruit the staff. The recruitment process is already under way. They will be going for training in August and September.
“And by the end of September they will be on the rail system. So it’s going to be a little painful until we get this unit up and running, but we are moving as fast as we can.”
Herron said Transport Minister Blade Nzimande suggested on Friday that perhaps it’s time to bring back the Railway Police. “Security personnel don’t have the powers of arrest and all those functions that you need. So the national minister was saying maybe we need to bring back the Railway Police… In a way this agreement between Prasa (Passenger Rail Agency), the province and the City is to create a pilot railway police while our national government gets its act together.
“When we met on Friday, the national minister, the provincial minister and myself, with the police commissioner and crime intelligence and the head of detectives, Minister Nzimande said to crime intelligence, ‘What are you doing, where is our intelligence capacity and why are you unable to tell us who is behind it and benefiting from it’. I have been calling it the R50 million question because of the damage that has been caused.”
After a visit to Transnet’s Paarden Island depot‚ where he inspected two trains destroyed by fire, Nzimande said “elements of serious organised crime” are behind some of the arson attacks.
Fingers are also being pointed at the taxi industry. “There is no evidence to rely on that it’s the taxi industry. I think we must let crime intelligence do their work. But someone must know something,” said Herron.
“I do think Metrorail and Prasa have got some questions to answer about their security system and their security providers because they have in-house security, but they also have also have outsourced security. So there are two parallel security systems operating…
“When I was there (Cape Town station) on Sunday, there were lots of them (security), but I don’t know what they are doing. They need some direction.”
Herron said there has been talk about "Prasa security having a kind of dotted reporting line to the City’s policing structure so that we could actually give them direction, where they need to be and when".
The set-up cost of R48 million for the new metro police unit is being shared equally by Prasa, the City and the provincial government. “Part of it is to provide vehicles and equipment and then about R25 million is for staffing. They will be fully fledged peace officers and be able to do arrests," said Herron.
“It’s a small unit, but as you can see 100 officers costing R48 million is quite expensive. But if it proves it has got value, then we can extend it in terms of its operations and its numbers. We will deploy those officers based on intelligence."
Regarding the decline of Metrorail's passenger numbers from 630 000 to 500 000 the past 18 months, Herron said: “You can’t expect 38 or 40 trains, or however many there currently are, to provide the same number of passenger trips as 88 train sets that used to operate. The actual rail capacity has reduced."