Africa-Press – South-Africa. The Presidency has shot down Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis’s threat to declare an intergovernmental dispute if President Cyril Ramaphosa does not respond to a request to create a joint working committee on rail devolution by the end of August.
On Monday, Hill-Lewis said the lack of a functional passenger rail system was severely felt in Cape Town during the recent taxi strike.
Tens of thousands of commuters were left stranded as taxis across the Western Cape stopped running for eight days.
Bus services were also severely curtailed for safety reasons as striking taxi drivers targeted operating bus drivers.
In some instances, commuters were forced to walk as far as 30 kilometres to get to work and home.
On Monday, Hill-Lewis urged Ramaphosa to convene the “joint working committee on passenger rail devolution”.
“We have urged the president to respond by 31 August to our request for a joint working committee on passenger rail devolution, failing which, we will resort to intergovernmental dispute mediation,” the mayor warned.
He added that passenger rail should be the backbone of the city’s transportation network.
“But [the rail network] has all but collapsed while Prasa (Passenger Rail Agency of SA) refuses to be held accountable for improving service levels to the public. All spheres of government have a duty to fix this situation without delay,” he said.
“A joint working committee on devolution is especially important, given the national transport director-general’s public commitment to gazetting a rail devolution strategy within 2023. The City wants to provide input to this national strategy and settle plans to devolve rail in Cape Town. Unfortunately, our request for a joint committee has been gathering dust on the president’s desk for more than two months now, which is not a situation we are prepared to tolerate,” he added.
The City has been pushing to take over the management of rail services in the metro for some time.
But Ramaphosa’s spokesperson Vincent Magwenya told News24 the Presidency didn’t “respond to threats in this regard”.
Magwenya said:
In May last year, Cabinet passed the White Paper on National Rail Policy, which commits to devolving rail to capable metros and producing a rail devolution strategy in 2023.
Fast-forward to May this year, when newly appointed Transport Minister Sindisiwe Chikunga told the media that there were no plans to devolve rail to the City.
Earlier this year, Chikunga’s predecessor, Fikile Mbalula, declined to form a working committee, confirming in a letter to Hill-Lewis that his department “has not been given a directive by the government and I to start with any form of devolution”.
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