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PUBLIC RELEASE OF THE STATE OF RAILWAY SAFETY IN SOUTH AFRICA REPORT FOR 2005/06

The State of Railway Safety in South Africa Report for 2005/06 is the first of its kind in our country.  We are required by our enabling Act to produce this report on an annual basis in order to make an objective assessment of the state of safety in our railways.  This report has recently been tabled in Parliament by the Minister of Transport, Minister Jeff Radebe.

In order to provide context to this report, it is important to note that the reporting requirements for railway operators, which in turn results in the compilation of this report are contained in the South African National Standard 3000-1.  The report itself alludes to the challenges encountered in both the collation of the data from operators and ensuring maximum compliance with the reporting requirements.  Notwithstanding the fact that at the time of the compilation of the report, we had issued 197 safety permits, the report itself is largely based on information provided by the South African Rail Commuter Corporation-Metrorail, Transnet Freight Rail, formerly Spoornet and a number of other rail operators.  These two entities alone represent 80% of all reportable occurrences within the railway sector in the country. 

 Other challenges encountered in the compilation of the report which must be taken into consideration in its interpretation is that because this kind of reporting is new to our operators, numerous mistakes were made on their part in allocating the information according to correct categories.  While some categories may be somewhat inflated because of this, however, the overall picture remains the same.  This anomaly has since been corrected through a simplified reporting system and will reflect in the next report to be released later this year.  We are also clamping down on those operators who consistently fail to comply with our reporting requirements.  We have laid charges against a number of operators who have failed to meet these requirements in order to compel them to submit the required information.

 Our report indicates that the state of railway safety in our country requires urgent and sustained interventions in order to improve safety performance.  We remain concerned at the high numbers of incidents with particular emphasis on collisions and derailments as well as security-related incidents.  This report indicates that security-related incidents remain high at 2,847 incidents reported for the 2005/06 period, representing 32.3% of all reportable occurrences.    These incidents include theft, muggings, assault and murder within the railway environment.  Of major concern is the high number of vandalism and theft of operational assets, which has a direct impact on safe railway operations.  Although there has been moderate improvement on personal safety, it still remains a major concern for commuters.  It is important to note that the high numbers can also, in part, be attributed to improved reporting in 2005/06 in comparison to the previous years.

The report further indicates that collisions and derailments stood at 2,950 incidents for 2005/06, representing 33.5% of all reportable occurrences. The major contributory factors to accidents have been identified as human error, which points to poor human factor management practices, with particular reference to safety critical positions.  Of the accident investigations that the RSR conducted in 2005/06 about 33% of the findings directly relate to human error, whilst 22% relate to poor infrastructure and technology, and the rest attributed to a combination of both human error and infrastructure.

 The ageing rail infrastructure has been identified as one area that plays a significant role in the lack of improvement in the state of safety in our railways.

 The costs associated with incidents for 2005/06 were dramatically high and thus impacted heavily on the cost of doing business in the country both in relation to Transnet Freight Rail and freight consignors.  For the year under review, incident costs for Transnet Freight Rail were in excess of R500 million, whilst costs for SARCC-Metrorail were slightly in excess of R150 million. In relation to the SARCC-Metrorail, this cost impacts on the public fiscus as well as public transport costs as the higher number of incidents increases the cost of running the service.

 The risk profiles of both Transnet Freight Rail and the SARCC-Metrorail remain high and have a bearing on the costs of managing risk in their respective environments. 

 This report provides us with an objective yardstick to measure our progress as we get down to work and ensure that we make sustainable impact in the improvement of the state of safety in South Africa’s railways.  We remain mindful of the obligations we have both in relation to ensuring that safety is the key feature of our railways during the hosting of the 2010 Soccer World Cup and beyond. 

 While the report itself may highlight areas of serious concern, tremendous progress has been made during 2006/07 to correct the state of affairs reflected in this report, and the directives we have issued to operators from time to time in order to avoid recurrence of incidents have yielded notable results.  This progress will be reported on in detail in the next State of Railway Safety report to be published during the course of this year.

 The operators remain directly responsible for maintaining safety in their environments, ours is to exercise oversight and ensure that their performance conforms to the standards we lay down.  The progress to date in addressing the alarming state of safety in our railways allows us to state categorically, without fear of contradiction that “the tide is turning.”  The sizeable investments made by government to transport infrastructure, with particular emphasis on rail further bolsters this confidence.  The RSR welcomes efforts at improving safety performance in our railways by major operators, SARCC-Metrorail and Transnet Freight Rail, following announcements on major capital investments in rail infrastructure, rolling stock and maintenance.  The RSR will play an active role in this regard through conducting technical audits which may assist in directing investment in safety critical areas.

 The following measures will ensure that the improvement in safety performance of our railways is sustainable:

a)    We will conclude safety performance management agreements with both Transnet Freight Rail and the SARCC-Metrorail in order to introduce performance targets and focus their activities insofar as they relate to improvement of safety performance.  This will further ensure that their risk profiles remain within acceptable levels.

b)    We are currently engaged in a process to amend our enabling Act in order to strengthen the RSR’s enforcement capability.

c)    The RSR is currently developing Construction Regulations for submission to the Minister, which integrate safety planning in the total life cycle of any new railway construction or infrastructure improvements. 

d)    We have developed a human factor management framework which will be used to develop detailed human factor management standards covering issues such as training and accreditation of train drivers.

e)    Work has already begun in the development of a set of standards to further improve safety in our railways.  These standards are:

·         General technical requirements for engineering and operational standards (SANS 3000-2-1)

·         Technical requirements for engineering and operational standards for track, civil and electrical infrastructure (SANS 3000-2-2)

·         Transportation of dangerous goods by rail – operational and design requirements and emergency information (SANS 10405).

f)     A dedicated railway safety inspectorate was established in 2006 in order to create capacity to conduct occurrence investigations, technical and safety management system audits as well as inspections.  We hope to augment the capacity of this Inspectorate in the coming year and therefore improve our capacity to respond to unsafe conditions in our railways.

g)    The re-introduction of the railway police within the South African Police Services and their deployment across the country has had a significant impact in arresting security-related incidents within the railway environment.  We congratulate these men and women whose work is to ensure that the millions of our people who use trains every day arrive home safely.  It may be early days, yet they are already making a telling difference.  We are also actively supporting the South African Police Services, through its Government Sector Security Regulator in the development of security standards for stations and trains.

h)   We are in the process of putting together a comprehensive stakeholder partnership programme that includes the corporate sector and commuter organisations in order to instil an activist culture as part of our multi-pronged approach to improving railway safety.  The South African Commuter Organisation (SACO) is ready to work with us in communities around the country to educate people on safe behaviour within and around railway environments as well as raise alarm where the public encounters unsafe railway operations.

i)     We have recently concluded a Co-operative Agreement with the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) in relation to the transportation of dangerous goods by rail, and to formalise collaboration and co-operation in areas of mutual interest and where our mandates require close interaction.  We are similarly in the process of concluding similar agreements with the South African Police Services, the Department of Labour and the Department of Minerals and Energy.

As we continually assess the industry performance in relation to safety, we have received reports to the effect that there are operators who undertake a railway service without a safety permit.  We are in the process of identifying these operators, and we will deal with them to the fullest extent of the law.  Section 22 of the National Railway Safety Regulator Act of 2002 prohibits the undertaking of any railway operation or a component of a railway operation without a safety permit, and we intend to ensure full compliance with this provision of the law.

Download the State of Railway Safety in South Africa Report for 2005/06