• HOME
  • WHO WE ARE
    • Our History
    • Achievements
    • Aims and Objectives
    • External Links
  • LEADERSHIP
    • National Office Bearers
    • Provincial Office Bearers
    • National Sector Coordinators
    • Heads of Departments
  • SECTORS
    • Transport Services
      • Rail
        • Freight (Transnet)
        • Passenger (Prasa)
      • Passenger Transport
        • Buses
        • Taxis
      • Freight and Goods Transport
    • Maritime Transport
    • Civil Aviation
    • Transport Infrastructure Services
      • Tollgates and Road Management
    • Property Services
    • Contract Security
    • Contract Cleaning
    • General Support Services
  • MEDIA CENTER
    • News
    • Galleries
      • Not Silent, Not Violent
      • ITG Global Women’s Conference
      • #Bring Back Our Girls Campaign
    • Publications
  • MEMBERS AREA
    • Why Join SATAWU
    • Who can join SATAWU?
    • Benefits of joining SATAWU
    • Download Constitution
    • Download Application Form
  • CONTACT
  • Cookie Policy (ZA)

Women Train Drivers Under Attack

August 27, 2019Zanele SabelaNews Report, Passenger (Prasa)No comments

Lerato Sithole* is proud of the job she does: getting Johannesburg’s commuters to work and back home again.

But when she first started driving trains for the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) she wasn’t prepared for the threats she would receive from commuters fed up with the country’s ailing rail system.

Amid Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula’s efforts to fix the South Africa’s trains, Sithole and her colleagues are calling for the safety of women train drivers to be put on the agenda of the minister’s recently launched “war room” at Prasa.

“As a train driver, and being a woman as well, it becomes a challenge because the kind of passengers we transport — it feels to us like they believe that a woman only belongs in the kitchen,” Sithole says, her brightly painted fingernails making her hand gestures even more expressive.

“When the train is faulty, it has nothing to do with you or with you being a woman: it is a mechanical fact. But they will attack you.”

Sithole says Prasa’s 293 women drivers are left exposed when trains break down. Not a week goes by during which train drivers do not have to contend with the challenges that accompany driving faulty trains, she says.

Last week, Mbalula announced that the work of the ministerial war room on Prasa had begun.

According to a statement from his department, the war room has three focus areas: “service recovery, safety management and accelerated implementation of the modernisation programme”.

Prasa has been beset with operational challenges in recent years, with reports of widespread cable theft and vandalism.

According to the rail agency’s annual report for the last financial year, more than 13% of scheduled trains were cancelled during the year and 26% of trains operated were delayed. There were also 97 safety-related incidents that year.

Last year, a woman train driver was stripped naked, hit with a brick and dragged into the bushes along the rail line in Pretoria. The attack was part of a series of protests on the rail line between Pienaarspoort and Pretoria.

Sithole says that when a train breaks down, a driver “cannot just stand there” because they are expected to conduct first-line maintenance.

This category of maintenance applies to minor faults — electrical trips, problems with the motor alternator set and vacuum exhauster — that can be rectified without the technical experts being called out. But conducting first-line maintenance often requires drivers to leave the relative safety of the drivers’ cab.

“But the question is now: how do you get to do that when there are people there busy screaming at you and calling you all these names?” Sithole says.

She recalls one day when she had to leave the cab to move the train on to a different track…

For more of this story click here.

 

Tags: Minister Fikile Mbalula, Prasa War Room, Safety, women train drivers under attack

Related Articles

SATAWU NTI Members to March to Department of Transport

August 18, 2019Zanele Sabela

WATCH: SATAWU-NTI strike | Members demonstrate over contract

August 19, 2019Zanele Sabela

SATAWU Calls on Mbalula to Act against Criminal Taxi Operators as Driver is Shot

November 18, 2019Zanele Sabela

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Learn More About Us

  • Our History
  • Scope of the Union
  • Aims and Objectives
  • Achievements

Get in Touch

Email
Facebook
Twitter
Google+

News Report

  • SATAWU WELCOMES THE INTERVENTION OF GOVERNMENT AT NTI
  • SATAWU URGES ITS MEMBERS, WORKERS, AND MOTORISTS TO BE EXTRA CAUTIOUS
  • SATAWU WELCOMES THE BAN OF SCRAP METAL SALE
  • SATAWU STANDS WITH SWATCAWU
  • SATAWU CONDEMNS THE SHOOTING OF SECURITY GUARDS AND TORCHING OF BUSUSAT PUTCO
Copyright@2018 SATAWU
Manage Cookie Consent
We use cookies to optimize our website and our service.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
Preferences
{title} {title} {title}