Key Sentence:
- The union, United National Transport Union (Untu), calls on President Kiril Ramaphosa to protect Transnet from sabotage, vandalism, and crime.
Unit Secretary-General Steve Harris said Transnet must have suffered many setbacks over the past year due to ineffective support to other key players, which has hindered its organizational goal of returning Transnet to Africa’s premier rail and logistics organization.
“In the latest blow, Transnet’s information technology systems were shut down after they were allegedly hacked overnight in a cyberattack,” he said. On Thursday, Transnet, which operates critical South African ports including Durban and Cape Town and a rail network that carries minerals and other exports, confirmed two separate statements that its IT applications were compromised and identified the cause without acknowledging confirmation of the cyberattack.
According to Harris, Transnet gave a statement to employees stating that some of its IT applications needed to be shut down to identify the source of the problem. However, all operations must continue to use the manual system, which causes delays. Harris said the incident occurred as Transnet was slowly recovering from what Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula described to the British Broadcasting Corporation as a “coup,”, vandalism and robberies in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.
“The minister acknowledged to the BBC that it might be that the South African government is taking longer than it should” to respond to this challenging situation, Harris said.
Harris Transnet reported losses of more than RW 259 million due to the riots in the ports of Richardsbay and Durban. Transnet employees could not attend work due to the dangerous situation, blocked roads, and lack of fuel. This causes delays in the movement of goods to and from the port.
“It is heartbreaking that our port and rail infrastructure, where employees continue to risk their lives during the Covid-19 pandemic to ensure goods, food, and supplies reach their destination and prop up the economy, is severely affected by the criminal behavior of several illegals. People,” said Harris. Transnet also reported this week that despite efforts to arrest more than seven hundred (700) people for cable theft, the number of incidents he suffers daily has not decreased.
Due to Harris, cable theft is the main reason for delays in the arrival of freight and passenger trains in the country for the South African Passenger Railroad Agency (Prasa). This has cost the South African economy between 5 and 7 billion ren a year and has risen to unprecedented levels since the Covid-19 pandemic broke out in March 2020.
Untu said it repeated its call to Ramaphosa and Police Minister Bheki Cele to explain to South Africans why there is a shortage of law enforcement agencies in the transport sector, particularly in the rail, port, truck, and taxi sectors.