PRASA seals wage deal

The Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa 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.