National Transport Minister, Sindisiwe Chikunga, says the responsibility of moving people occupying land on train lines falls squarely on the shoulders of the City of Cape Town.
After a long battle over responsibility for this, the City, the Western Cape Government, PRASA, and the Housing Development Agency had all been working together to solve the problem.
But those efforts appear to have collapsed in failure.
The minister made the statement to journalists during an oversight visit of PRASA projects ahead of her maiden Budget Vote, that will be tabled in the National Assembly on Wednesday.
Chikunga says that it’s these illegal settlements that prevent the full rehabilitation and restoration of train services.
And the City needs to find land to relocate those living on or alongside the train lines
” The space around Cape Town belongs to the Metro. Initially, they said they don’t have money for doing that. The national department of Human Settlements whose mandate is relocation and moving of people as well as building houses, gave them R111 million because they said they don’t have money”.
Meanwhile, the municipality had responded by saying, “It would be impossible for the City to spend the R111m received on 30 March 2023 in the remaining weeks of our financial year ending in June 2023 due to the time required to meet planning and procurement regulations”.
