The residents of ZF Mgcawu and Pixley ka Seme districts in the Northern Cape overwhelmingly welcomed the Railway Safety Bill [B7-2021] and called for it to be finalised urgently in order to unlock job opportunities in the two districts.
This is after the Portfolio Committee on Transport has held public hearings on the Bill in Upington on Saturday and in De Aar today, wherein residents called for railway transportation to be reinstated due to the vastness of distances between towns in the province.
Residents believe that railway transportation can create job opportunities through a need for the provision of security, maintenance, cleaning and other services at train stations as well as entrepreneurial opportunities.
The Chairperson of the committee, Mr Lisa Mangcu, assured the residents that their inputs on the Bill were well received and will then be consolidated with those from other provinces.
Mr Mangcu said: “We are going to consolidate inputs from all the provinces and deliberate on how they can be inserted in the Bill. The issues that were unrelated to the Bill and the work of the committee will then be forwarded to the relevant committees and government departments for further processing.”
The Railway Safety Bill seeks to improve the regulatory framework regulating railway safety in South Africa in order to improve the safety of passengers and freight. It furthermore seeks to provide guidance on the governance of the Railway Safety Regulator (RSR) and to address operators’ concerns raised over time about South Africa’s system of railway safety.
The Bill places emphasis and focus on railway safety, and recognizes the role of operators in managing and implementing safety measures, with the RSR promoting safety and ensuring compliance with such measures.
The public hearings are conducted in terms of Section 59 (1) (a) of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, which requires the National Assembly (NA) to facilitate public involvement in the legislative and other processes of the NA and its committees.
The committee has held public hearings in seven provinces thus far. The provinces are: Limpopo, Mpumalanga, Gauteng, North West, KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape and Northern Cape. The remaining provinces are Free State and Western Cape.