UTATU United Transport and Allied Trade Union

UTATU protests contributed to Metrorail’s level-crossing safety pledge

Responding to UTATU-led pressure, Metrorail has promised the nation safer level crossings.
 
All new level crossings will be crossed either by bridge or subway, says the passenger rail service.

Metrorail has yet to make known its intentions with regard to those existing level-crossings that are proving to be death traps.

UTATU - supported by labour federation, Fedusa - was at the forefront of the protests that followed the level-crossing deaths in Natal and the Boland.

Inter alia, the nation’s premier rail union called for:
• Immediate action to make level-crossings safer.
• Extreme care on the part of motorists and pedestrians when approaching rail crossings.
• Train drivers and the SA Rail Safety Regulator to be represented on Metrorail’s safety forums.
• The closure of the Muldersvlei line until adequate measures can be introduced to make it safe.

In separate media interviews, general secretaries, Chris de Vos and Steve Harris, made it clear that:
- The country urgently needs safer rail crossings.
- There is little a train driver can do to prevent an accident when people take chances. Trains are not wheelbarrows that  can be stopped in an instant. When a train driver applies his emergency brakes, it can take the train 600 metres and more to stop.
- Train drivers and commuters involved in fatal accidents are often traumatised for life.

“UTATU’s level-crossing safety calls to Metrorail apply equally to Transnet Freight Rail,” says Chris de Vos, who is also a board member of the SA Rail Safety Regulator.

As this issue went to press, Metrorail had yet to respond to UTATU’s call for it to include train driver and Safety Regulator input in its meetings on rail safety.

TFR’s arbitrary shutdown an irresponsible act that cost millions and could have caused loss of life
- says rail union

Utatu, Transnet’s largest rail union, slammed Transnet Freight Rail’s short-notice decision to arbitrarily halt its rail services from 06h00 to 08h00 on Friday 12 December – the rush hour for commuters – as ‘a short-sighted and irresponsible action that cost the country millions and could have caused riots and loss of life.’

Says Utatu general secretary, Chris de Vos, who is also a board member of the South African Rail Safety Association: “Whoever made that decision is not a railway professional.

“The shutdown was decreed at midnight on 11 December – just a few hours before it had to be implemented. There was no prior warning of it for either rail workers or passengers.

“The reason for the shutdown, in TFR’s words, was ‘to commemorate the fatal injury of an employee (Mr Nxosinathi Nxumalo), as well as the serious injuries to two other employees – and to stress the importance of safety.’

“Rail workers are all for safer practices and working conditions,” says De Vos. “But to mourn departed colleagues in that manner was an act of madness. One does not achieve safety by ignoring the basic principles of safety – safe, rational and professional actions.

“Had TFR first communicated with its professional rail workers, the shutdown would not have happened without prior notice or at peak hours.

“TFR’s shutdown decision – which, in effect, told its customers that Freight Rail has little interest in them – caused havoc.

“It forced trains to come to a halt before they could reach their stations, had passengers jumping from trains into the veld and anxious relatives waiting on platforms, not knowing what was happening.

“It was sheer luck that no violence resulted from the mayhem.

“The results for the company’s freight customers were as bad.

“Nine freight trains carrying coal worth many millions were stranded on the lower reaches of the country’s vital coal line for 24 hours because the two-hour stoppage resulted in train crews exceeding their shifts.

“As a result transport had to be found to ferry replacement crews to as near to the stranded trains as they could get.

“TFR workers, who are penalised for the mildest errors, are now waiting to see if the architects of the chaos will have to face disciplinary action or will be shielded by Transnet’s Old Boy network.”

Transnet had banned its employees from tendering for its contracts, chief executive Maria Ramos said yesterday - April 7 2005.

Ramos said the prohibition would be unpopular with many of the parastatal's 80 000 employees, but she told the annual general meeting of Chambers of Commerce and Industry SA that the practice of employees applying for contracts from companies they worked for was a breeding ground for corruption.