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FRUITLESS and wasteful expenditure. Let me give you a little example of how that term trickles down to land with toxic impact on people who are very vulnerable.
Metrorail is the commuter ‘service’ provided by Prasa (the Passenger Rail Association of South Africa, one of those state-owned enterprises which it was suggested in August this year should be controlled by the ‘presidential state-owned companies' coordinating council’).
It posted a R336m profit in 2013/2014 – but then along came those dashed awkward train purchases that turned out not to be suited to our rail systems (cost, some R3.6bn). As a result, in spite of revenues of around R7.3bn in 2015, the group suffered a loss of R1.2bn.
This morning, for the second time in November, my employee sat on the station waiting for a train for nearly two hours.
Last time it happened I told her to go home, but it was her birthday today, and we had got cake and candles as a surprise, so I told her to come in anyway, even if her half-day got rather truncated.
When she arrived and had a moan about the train service, she said that some of her fellow passengers were quite panicked that this would mean they’d lose their jobs. Jobs that don’t pay very much – but employers don’t seem to understand that taking two taxis instead of one train, paid for on a monthly basis, eats into the tiny wage.
The most recent Pietermaritzburg Agency for Community Social Action (PACSA) Price Barometer, for October 2016, notes that: “In October 2016, the price of the ‘big foods,’ (maize meal, rice, cake flour, white sugar and cooking oil) which women in low income households identify as foods they must secure every month for basic energy and [to] enable meals to be cooked” had increased by 23% year-on-year.
Two additional taxi fares are an enormous cost in a budget that’s being shrunk so dramatically.
Imagine being in a situation where your family has become food-insecure as a result of these massive increases in food prices (PACSA’s reports show that low-income families are underspending on food by upwards of 50% - which has implications for productivity, stunting of children and more).
And then, at this precarious economic time, still in a drought situation, just before Christmas, you lose the job that stands between your family and starvation. Because your means of transport, the train which you can just afford, is unreliable.
I thought I’d contact Metrorail and find out what on earth was happening. On Prasa’s website, it says its mission is:
Sustainable transport solutions through service excellence, innovation and modal integration
PRASA’s mission reflects four key intentions:
• Service excellence - superior performance that is safe, reliable and affordable, and which makes a lasting impression by actively building brand loyalty – both internally (employees) and externally (customers) – ultimately adding benefit to the passenger.
• Sustainability - a triple bottom line focus on sustainable development that considers not only financial profit, but also environmental quality and social equity.
• Mobility solutions - reframing the basis of business delivery to favour innovation, integration and partnerships
• Integration - safe, seamless and dignified travel experiences across all modes of public transport.
Luvverly stuff, innit?
Nobody answers the Metrorail switchboard number in Gauteng head office (011 773 1600). I let it ring three times for over two minutes. The click-through to customer care doesn’t work (lol), but if you try Gauteng South, surprisingly, you get customer care. Press 2 for “customer care and complaints”, however, and you get cut off.
You get no response from 1, but 3 – Protection Services – gives you a constant loop of an American-accented voice telling you that “All of our represennatives are assisting other callers at this time. Your call is VERY important to us. Please stay on the line and your call will be handled in the order it was received.” Six minutes later, I thought I’d switch to 4 – Business Express – and to my surprise, I actually got to speak to someone.
Apparently, the delay was due to a power failure at Florida. This, it was pointed out to me, was Eskom and not Metrorail’s fault. Yes, I said, but this is not the first time this month there has been such a long delay and shorter delays are so common, we hardly pay attention any more. If power failures are a regular cause of delays, would it not be necessary for Metrorail to make contingency plans to continue providing their “superior performance that is safe, reliable and affordable”?
“Yes, but what can you do if there’s a power failure at your house?” “If it’s regular, I can get in a generator, or put in solar panels… What about laying on buses?” I asked. That earned the retort: “Metrorail doesn’t have BUSES!”
I’d really like to ask someone about the overall cause of delays and contingency plans, I intimated. So I got put through to someone – except that the phone call dropped at that point. End of seamless, dignified interaction with Metrorail.
I’m not sure if fruitless and wasteful expenditure is responsible for the difficulties in telcomms with Metrorail. But I’m pretty sure that the money wasted on unsuitable trains could have been used to beef up this essential service to vulnerable people who need to keep their jobs. #FruitlessAndWastefulExpenditureMUSTFall.
*Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own. Follow her on Twitter.
