Pic: SALife
Faizel Patel – 19/08/2020
Associate Attorney at Adams and Adams Raznae Narayanasami says the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) & Metro Rail have an obligation to ensure the reasonable safety of commuters.
Narayanasami was speaking to Radio Islam on Wednesday about a constitutional court judgement that reinforced specific constitutional obligations to protect passengers’ bodily integrity.
This judgment confirms that public law duties may in certain circumstance, merge into a private law duty to prevent harm to individuals.
Narayanasami says a number of safety measure must be implemented to protect commuters who travel by train.
“Prasa needs to ensure that they have security guards in the trains first of all. Secondly, we’ve seen quite a few cases where people have been thrown out of moving trains simply because of the trains were opened. It’s quite simple that train doors should not be opened while a train is in motion. So those are just two examples of safety measures that can be implemented by Prasa.”
Narayanasami says any person who has suffered damage owing to bodily injury may institute legal proceedings, provided they can establish that their damages or injuries were caused as a result of a reasonably probable connection to a train, including that PRASA / Metrorail, its employees (through vicarious liability) were negligent, among other criteria.
Listen to the interview with Raznae Narayanasami
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