The United National Transport Union (UNTU) on Sunday urged the South African Police Service (SAPS) to re-establish the railway police.

If the SAPS was serious about fighting the drastic increase in violent crime at railway stations across the country, it would re-establish the railway police as it existed before it was incorporated into the regular police in 1986, the union said in a statement.

“[That is] The only way the SAPS will prevent more people dying at our railway stations. We need dedicated railway police who are permanently stationed at the stations and on the trains and who will priorities the combatting of any crime committed,” UNTU general secretary Steve Harris said in the statement.

Last week, two UNTU shop steward were attacked and robbed at the Salt River railway station on the old main line between Cape Town and Bellville. Mandilake Qhunyana was robbed and stabbed on the train between Salt River and Woodstock station. According to Qhunyana, there was no security on the train at the time. Both shop stewards where severely traumatised by the violent attacks.

“They were attacked in separate incidents days after UNTU’s members learned that a male armed security guard, 33, of Comwezi Security was shot in the head by two armed robbers on Monday afternoon while patrolling the central railway line between Heideveld and Nyanga near Thambo Village with a female colleague to ensure that the signalling boxes are not stolen. The robbers fled with the firearms of both security guards. The suspects are still at large,” Harris said.

“Two weeks ago train driver Pieter Barend (Piet) Botha was shot twice in the head for his bag while waiting for a train at the Netreg station a few kilometres away. Mr Brian Davids, full-time UNTU executive council member, has warned the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) that the central line between Cape Town and Khayelitsha on the Cape Flats is getting increasingly dangerous to use and should be closed if Prasa is unable to properly secure it.”

Meanwhile, in Gauteng commuters travelling from Vereeniging and Westonaria via Midway to Johannesburg were left stranded on Wednesday last week due to a delay caused by a violent community protest in Kliptown, Soweto. Rocks and burning tyres were placed on railway lines and trains were pelted with stones.

Harris said the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) recently described the integration of the railway police in 1986 into the police as an excellent example of how this led to neglect of local crime and service delivery priorities.

“The integration was accompanied by undertakings that with an enlarged SAPS, more attention would be given to the rail industry, its property, staff, and commuters. Over the next few years quite the opposite happened, and the situation deteriorated to the extent that the rail industry had to employ private security companies. It was only in 2003 that a dedicated railway police capability was established within the SAPS,” the ISS said in a report.

The dedicated railway police unit within the SAPS was not effective enough to combat violent crime. It was difficult to pinpoint the exact extent of this as no separate crime statistics were kept for railways.

Harris said Transnet group CEO Siyabonga Gama and the Federation of Unions of South Africa (Fedusa), to which UNTU was affiliated, supported his call. Gama had complained that Transnet was struggling with service delivery due to cable theft.

UNTU would seek, through Fedusa, a meeting between the Ministers of Public Enterprises, Transport, Finance and Police, and the union, Transnet, and Fedusa to discuss the re-establishment of the railway police, Harris said.