The Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) and its key union reached a wage agreement that will see a 5.5% increase in workers’ pay across the board.
The United National Transport Union and Prasa signed the pact on pay for the year through March 2026 yesterday “following a difficult and drawn-out negotiation period,” Untu said in a statement Friday.
In addition to the increase, there will be no forced retrenchments of employees in the bargaining unit in the corporate office, the rail and technical units, the long-distance passenger division and the intersite unit during the period.
Prasa collapsed in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic after looters vandalised most of its 580 stations and stole power lines feeding the trains, rendering about 95% of its network unusable.
It’s slowly restoring services, with annual user trips rising to 39-million nationwide in the year to March 2024. While that’s an improvement from a nadir of 10-million in fiscal 2021, it’s a far cry from a peak of 646-million in 2009. Its disintegration has shifted more commuters than ever to mini-bus taxis, already the most common mode of transport after walking.
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