With rail safety on top of Prasa’s list, their national safety campaign made its way to the Western Cape where officials met during a site visit at Vasco Station on Wednesday 20 March.
Prasa spokesperson Zinobulali Mihi says Vasco Station is in a busy area, where there are lots of activities in Voortrekker Road.
“As we transport masses of commuters, it is our duty as Metrorail to continue to raise awareness on rail safety. We owe this to our customers and stakeholders including the media,” says Mihi.
“Some of the areas that we sensitise our customers on are issues that relate to:
- Crossing the railway line in unsafe and unauthorised areas;
- accessing the station from the edge of the platform;
- criminal activities from the nearby communities in the area, moving to the station area; and
- commuter behaviour towards our officials (access controllers and security personnel at the station).
Several interventions
“Several interventions are implemented internally and externally to address safety-related issues within the business – these are more targeted at customer behaviour. As a business, we conduct several rail and road safety campaigns as we uphold a culture of safety in the region. We collaborate with various stakeholders such as Transnet, the Railway Safety Regulator (RSR), the Provincial Government of the WC departments, the City of Cape Town departments, police, GCIS, district municipalities, Road Accident Fund and many more to conduct safety campaigns at stations, on-board the train, level crossings, schools, shopping malls/centres and in community halls. There are more security deployments in various key hotspot areas within the region,” says Mihi.
According to Mihi the aim and objective of the safety awareness campaign was to educate commuters and community members on issues affecting the service and new service offerings and useful platforms for information.
Gradually re-opening lines
“We have been conducting rail safety awareness campaigns and other activities on the northern corridor as we are gradually re-opening new lines/corridors. These include several community interventions, community outreach programmes, on-board safety awareness campaigns, school visits, mall visits and station visits. Our agenda is driven by the security and risk assessments that we continually do as we improve our service offering.
“We have an events calendar for safety campaigns that we follow to conduct these programmes. As and when there is an urgent request from our stakeholders or from internally, we adjust our plan to accommodate the urgent request,” says Mihi.
