Prasa Set to Remove Illegal Communities As Per Court Order, 8 500 People to Be Relocated

• Prasa says approximately 8 500 who live on train tracks in Cape town will have to be forcibly removed by November
• This comes after the Western Cape High Court issued a court order that granted Prasa permission to remove the occupants
• Prasa has been mandated by the court to offer alternative land to relocate the occupants before removing them

Cape Town - The Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) says they have been given until November 26 to remove residents in Cape Town in terms of a court order that was granted to the company.

According to The Citizen, the Western Cape High Court issued an order requiring the families of the Siyahlala informal settlement to be relocated and sheltered on 30 July, 2021.

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Acting Judge Alma de Wet stated that the families should be permitted to visit the new area prior to the relocation and should be allowed to do so at the very least four weeks prior.

According to the court orders, families who opted not to relocate to the new area allocated to them would then have to be forcibly removed from the Prasa train tracks they currently occupy.

According to EWN, Leonard Ramatlakane, chairperson of the Prasa board, stated that they have been in communication with the current occupants at the informal settlement but said some of the residents have shown an aversion to being relocated.

Ramatlakane stated that since some of the occupants showed no desire to be relocated, they had to approach the courts for a solution. He also stated that the company has been working with Housing Development Agency and have identified two pieces of land for the occupants to move to in Eerste River and Stellenbosch.

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According to Ramatlakane, around 8 500 people currently live around or on the Prasa train tracks.

Prasa's R200 million plan to hire volunteers as 'guards' put on hold

Briefly News previously reported that the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa)'s desperate R200 million plan to hire 5 000 volunteers to patrol has been halted by newly-appointed CEO Zolani Matthews.

The plan, which was highly praised by Minister of Transport Fikile Mbalula, was launched in March and called the People's Responsibility to Protect Project (PR2P), according to Daily Maverick.

The plan was put into place to try to curb billions of rand in damage to the railway infrastructure caused by theft and vandalism. The hired volunteers would be under the supervision of the ANC military veterans.

However, Matthews paused further recruitment for PR2P due to a number of problems identified within the project just days after his appointment as CEO, according to News24.

Source: Briefly News