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For years the Ministers of Transport have missed promised deadlines to repair the Central Line railway and get it working again for the more than one million residents reliant on the railway service to commute affordably.

It’s in this light that the DA is not convinced by the latest promises made by the Minister of Transport, Minister Barbara Creecy, in response to a parliamentary question asked by the DA regarding the re-institution of railway services on the City of Cape Town Central Line.

The response from the new Minister of Transport is that the line is being recovered over phases – with new end dates of December this year for Nonkqubela, Khayelitsha, Kuyasa and Chris Hani with a promise that the remaining stations, Lentegeur, Mitchells Plain and Kapteinsklip will be recovered by the end of March 2025.

Yet, in April this year, the then Minister of Transport, Sindiswe Chikunga announced that the Central Line to Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain will be fully operational in May. Earlier, PRASA told parliament that the central line would be fully operational by March.

The DA will continue pushing for Western Cape Powers Bill in the Provincial Legislature in order to take over and fix what has been broken by an ANC-led National Government. There is a desperate need for affordable, safe and reliable rail services in Cape Town. The Bill, tabled last year, seeks to establish a groundwork for the devolution of five key areas of government to the provincial level, including public transport.

In the meantime, we will hold the Transport Minister accountable for each promise and timeline, with oversight visits and regular requests to do progress reports to the Select Committee on Transport in the NCOP.

Issued by Rikus Badenhorst MP - DA Spokesperson for Transport in the NCOP