Montana says dismissal illegal - As it happened

Montana hints that he has been treated unfairly at Prasa, but won't go into details.

"...Something grossly unjust and unfair has happened."

Montana has said he will be holding his own briefing later on Friday.

So what exactly is going on at Prasa if they call a briefing and 15 minutes after its set to start suddenly announce that it's cancelled because they apparently feel there's nothing further to say? Rather curious sequence of events.

The National Union of Metalworkers of SA says Montana's axing shows that there is a lack of accountability in state-owned entities.

Numsa's general secretary Irvin Jim said Montana's removal was also evidence of maladministration and what he labelled as looting - something which was becoming prevalent in the country.

"Montana’s axing comes a few days after Eskom cleared four executives of wrongdoing after they were suspended in March this year. His exit follows the recycling of other executives from one state entity into the other such as the re-appearance of Brian Molefe as an acting CEO of Eskom after a stint at Transnet," Jim said in a statement.

Montana also says his dismissal was no surprise and told Eyewitness News he had been expecting it for a while.

He says he'd been having a running battle with the board and its chairperson for about eight months.

The board of the Passenger Railway Agency of SA (Prasa) will hold a media briefing on Friday during which it is expected to shed some light on several issues, including the reasons behind the axing of its CEO Lucky Montana.

Prasa on Thursday announced that Montana had been dismissed with immediate effect and its current chief of operations, Nathi Khena, would take over Montana's duties until a suitable replacement was found. A statement released by Prasa on Thursday did not reveal any details about why Montana was fired.

Montana's removal comes amid heat on Prasa, following allegations that the state-owned entity had put billions into new diesel locomotives which allegedly did not conform to SA rail line standards.

It was, however, unclear whether Montana's dismissal had anything to do with the new locomotives.