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Cape Town - Transnet acting CEO Chris Wells said on Tuesday that damage to facilities during last month's strike by the parastatal's workers was estimated at R60m - some of which is insurable and some not.
"So there's a lot of repair work that needs to be done," he told reporters after briefing parliament's transport and public enterprises committees.
"Secondly, the aftermath of any strike means you've got to catch up on backlogs and that's a thing that's often overlooked." Wells said that not all of the costs to the economy are permanently lost.
"If a product is to be exported and it's not a deteriorating product, it can still be exported and you can catch that up," he said. "So our programme over the next two to three months is to catch up all the backlogs and get back to normal as soon as possible, and therefore restore the position as close to what it would have been before the strike."
He said he would talk more specifically about the direct costs to the company in his annual results "I'm not going to talk about that right now," he said.
The results, he added, will be released in the next few weeks.
Meanwhile, he said he has not lost sight of the target to increase the exports loads of coal and other bulk products.
"We took the opportunity during the strike to have our normal closedown of the coal line for maintenance, and that occurred during the period of the strike. Not all the time was lost or dead as it were.
"We are planning still to have significant growth of volumes compared to last year - we hope still to do in the area of 65 million tonnes [of coal exports] during the year. Clearly it's been made a bit more difficult, but we think we can still do that."
He said that Transnet's pipeline operated as normal throughout the strike, and though bulk exports were impacted they were not "hit as badly, not as much as containers."
He added that contracts have not been affected by the strike. "Strikes are factored into our contracts," he said. "It's a normal thing."
- I-Net Bridge
"So there's a lot of repair work that needs to be done," he told reporters after briefing parliament's transport and public enterprises committees.
"Secondly, the aftermath of any strike means you've got to catch up on backlogs and that's a thing that's often overlooked." Wells said that not all of the costs to the economy are permanently lost.
"If a product is to be exported and it's not a deteriorating product, it can still be exported and you can catch that up," he said. "So our programme over the next two to three months is to catch up all the backlogs and get back to normal as soon as possible, and therefore restore the position as close to what it would have been before the strike."
He said he would talk more specifically about the direct costs to the company in his annual results "I'm not going to talk about that right now," he said.
The results, he added, will be released in the next few weeks.
Meanwhile, he said he has not lost sight of the target to increase the exports loads of coal and other bulk products.
"We took the opportunity during the strike to have our normal closedown of the coal line for maintenance, and that occurred during the period of the strike. Not all the time was lost or dead as it were.
"We are planning still to have significant growth of volumes compared to last year - we hope still to do in the area of 65 million tonnes [of coal exports] during the year. Clearly it's been made a bit more difficult, but we think we can still do that."
He said that Transnet's pipeline operated as normal throughout the strike, and though bulk exports were impacted they were not "hit as badly, not as much as containers."
He added that contracts have not been affected by the strike. "Strikes are factored into our contracts," he said. "It's a normal thing."
- I-Net Bridge
