The Gautrain has been traveling since the beginning of level 4 of the national Covid-19 restriction, but other trains with level 3 coming into operation on Monday will still remain at the station.
This is because the beleaguered Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) is not yet ready to resume train services, Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula said at a media conference in Pretoria on Saturday afternoon.
He talked about the transport regulations that will apply at level 3.
Mbalula says everything is possible to get Prasa back to an “acceptable level of readiness” as soon as possible.
Hopefully this will happen on July 1st and some services will resume.
Mbalula says Prasa – over which there have been very serious allegations of corruption and mismanagement over the past few years – had had serious problems long before the outbreak of the Covid 19 pandemic.
“It does not help us open the train service just to help spread the coronavirus,” the minister said.
“The challenge with transporting people at level 3 of the restriction is to find the balance between mobility and prevent the Covid-19 virus from spreading further.”
