1 November 2006
By Shaun Benton
The government has launched a railway policing unit in a move it hopes will reduce crime on trains in South Africa.
More than 50 entry-level constables and 17 senior police officials were on parade at the Retreat Station in Cape Town on Tuesday as part of a group of 400 police officials already at work in various stations throughout the Western Cape.
The Retreat railway station as well as the Bellville station are the two "contact centres" for railway police in the province. Up to 24 contact centres are envisaged throughout South Africa.
The South African Rail Commuter Corporation (SARCC) and Metrorail, its urban rail link, are investing more than R80-million in the public transport safety programme, said Lucky Montana, the chief executive of SARCC-Metrorail.
Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula was also on hand to welcome the policemen and women as part of a pilot project to curb crime, such as robbery and murder, on trains and at stations.
The police officers would be "ambassadors for peace and security", Nqakula said, adding that there would also be police officers deployed on long-distance trains.
With the introduction of the Railway Police Unit in Cape Town, crime on the rail networks of the city had been reduced by 31 percent in past year, said Western Cape Community Safety MEC Leonard Ramatlakane.
The current project was the result of a Cabinet decision in 2003 to improve safety on public transport.
The move also ties in with efforts focusing on public transport ahead of the hosting of the Fifa World Cup in 2010, with plans under way to extend the Railway Police Unit throughout South Africa by 2008.
The deployment of 250 railway police constables in Gauteng is planned, with another 110 in KwaZulu-Natal and 250 in the Eastern Cape.
By the time the rollout is completed in 2008, an estimated 5 000 police will be patrolling South Africa's rail corridors, "taking full control of all our security concerns in our railway stations and trains", said Transport Minister Jeff Radebe.
Over the next three years government has committed to upgrading more than 2 000 rail coaches to meet passenger demand and to ensure adequate rolling stock by the time of the hosting of the World Cup in 2010, Radebe said.
This accompanies a focus on strategic high-volume corridors such as in Khayelitsha in Cape Town, Hammanskraal in Tshwane, Moloto in Mpumalanga as well as links between Midrand and Tembisa.
This fits in with the "modal integration and mass link networks in support of our national public transport strategy", he said, with a focus also on stations, including that of Cape Town, a key transport hub that has recently become the focus of heightened commuter safety concerns.
An airport rail link between the Cape Town International Airport and the Cape Town central business district was "highly possible", Radebe said.
He added that the government of KwaZulu-Natal had also "mooted a strong argument for a speed-train link between that province and Gauteng, particularly in view of the 2010 Fifa World Cup, but said "a lot more work is still required to persuade us to agree on this project".
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