Rail passenger entities to merge
David Masango
2 December 2004
Cabinet on Wednesday approved a draft plan presented by the Department of Transport to merge the country's railways passenger entities into one body.
The entities are Metrorail, Shosholoza Meyl, and the South African Rail Commuters Corporation.
Addressing the media in Pretoria following the last Cabinet meeting of the year, government spokesperson Joel Netshitenzhe said the remaining entity, Transnet, would focus on freight services.
He said these plans were informed by the need to improve rail services to communities and to ensure that Transnet focused on providing freight services to support economic activity and job-creation.
"The aim is to ensure that, with direct government involvement, we improve commuter services to the public and that Transnet should focus on freight services in order to meet the objectives of improving the national logistics system that President Thabo Mbeki referred to in his State of the Nation Address,"
said Netshitenzhe.
Netshitenzhe said a task team has been set up to accelerate the implementation of the plan and the setting up of a transitory mechanism to supervise the merger of the three entities.
Source: BuaNews
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