The Department of Transport has identified priority corridors across provinces for a service recovery by the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA) in the financial year, Minister Fikile Mbalula said on May 24.
PRASA will, over the medium term, be allocated 27.2%, or about R57-billion, of the department's budget.
“As part of our budget speech, we highlighted the state of vandalism in the PRASA infrastructure and network, together with plans to recover the corridors," he said.
He said the department had started the recovery of the Mayfair station as it formed part of the national station improvement programme and part of the Gauteng corridors to be recovered in the current financial year.
“There has been serious vandalism and theft of rail infrastructure and the station is currently not operational," he pointed out.
Mbalula said the recovery programme for the Mayfair station would include rebuilding the station.
The station is expected to be operational again by March 2022.
Meanwhile, he acknowledged that PRASA was facing challenges with regard to security as a result of its security contracts having been cancelled.
“PRASA adopted a strategy of having a fully-fledged in-house security within the next three medium-term expenditure framework periods.
"This will be achieved through a phased-in approach. In the first phase, 3 100 security guards were insourced."