Hon member, our challenge is not lying on the devolution. It is lying on the business model that has been devastated over the years, like we have reported in our report that the stock is old and outdated.
Now, you will know in the system that we have the biggest factory in Gibela that is producing the new rolling stock and we are in the process of rolling it out. The first main corridor through the
intervention of the war room this Friday, will sure case that that is up and operational. It has only challenges in the afternoon. Good signalling and good revenue because people pay for the service that is good for them and that is Pienaarspoort. It is generating profit. I may not give you the figures now, but it is our new model.
What we are doing now we are actually intervening through the war room to ensure that what we were supposed to do with regard to the rail network in our country, the passenger rail it is something that is worth and that everybody will buy a ticket and actually use it because the passenger rail is affordable to the poorest of the poor who in the Western Cape in particular, we have about 20 000 people who are not catered by the taxis because of the stalling of MyCiTi programme, Bus Rapid Transit, BRT, in the Western Cape. We have that particular challenge and therefore we need to get this people into the taxis which are unaffordable.
The main line corridor network is totally devastating because we have all sorts of challenges. So, in terms of the war room intervention and the things I have actually mentioned, fixing the pair way, dealing with derailments and all of those particular
things, are things that in a period of 15 weeks to come, they will be history.
The upgrading of the rolling stock as we wish is actually happening and it will happen faster. By the time we reach December, we will have produced 164 new trains which will be dispatched in the main corridors in the country. In the next 15 weeks, all the challenges we have in terms of our rolling stock and the network not responding in terms of time will have been reduced fundamentally.
As we now speak, we have challenges, but in terms of time and all that we are able to respond adequately through the war room and changing things in our trains. We have the turnaround strategy which has not been implemented, but the war room as a mechanism of intervention, ensures that we do not deal with things on a short, you know, stopgap measure we are permanent in a way. The solution whether it lies in the devolution, we will disagree. The question is: We have Prasa, the board and a company that must run properly and we are filling critical vacancies. We have filled three important vacancies at Prasa led by black women. That is the chief financial officer, human resource and also the chief procurement officer. [Applause.]
We are now going for the filling of the vacancy through the board of the chief executive officer, CEO. So, critical vacancies were depleted. That place was completely in a state of devastation. We are addressing that.
In terms of security our approach is different. We are taking an approach where in which security in terms of Prasa we are no longer simply dealing with the security what is called outsourcing security. We want over a period of time to in source the security and built internal capacity within Prasa, which will collaborate with the police and so on to bring about security in our airlines and protect the commuters and so on. That process has started through the war room. You would have seen that there has been a security interruption because we stopped all the contracts. Why should we have security and pay it millions and billions? Yet we have cable theft and all other things. What do we do in terms of security? We are going to put on the fences around the corridor lines where in which there is encroachment because of urbanisation. We will work with municipalities everywhere including in Cape Town, to ensure that the bylaws are respected.
So, that is what we are in the process of doing and in the next 15 weeks which are critical, you are going to see change in relation to that. Person power in the trains to deal with people who simply get there and do not pay, but at the same time our rolling stock must be up to standard, must run on time and that is what is important.
So, we will implement a security system which is combative, but at the same time, it is a security system that deals with people whenever there is disorder in the trains and all of that. We will combine that training work hand in hand with the SA Police Service, SAPS, which requires a lot of money, but we have secured funding through the Sector Education and Training Authorities, Setas, to train our security capacity in the trains going forward. That is where we are heading to in changing the situation in the trains going forward. Thank you, Chair.