Gibela train facility is halfway finished
Gibela has reached the 50 per cent completion milestone of the construction of its train manufacturing facility in Dunnottar, exactly one year into the project.
The Gibela train facility is where 580 commuter trains will be built for the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA) to replace their aging stock.
“The factory, the first and only of its kind on the continent, will, at peak production, manufacture 62 trains a year,” says Vuyiswa Tlomatsane, Gibela’s construction director.
The manufacturing facility consists of the main factory where the trains will be assembled, a training centre where South Africans will augment their rail-related technical skills, testing facilities for static and dynamic testing, and a 27 hectare supplier park.
The construction programme is divided into eight packages and all contractors have been on-boarded.
Tlomatsane says packages one and two are now at advanced stages of completion, with the other six packages at various stages of equipment installation.
All packages are due to be completed by the end of 2017.
“It is expected the manufacture of the first car body shell will start as soon as all the industrial equipment has been tested, commissioned and the buildings have met and satisfied all regulatory requirements, resulting in the issuance of occupation certificates,” he says.
Pamela Radebe, communications manager at Gibela, says: “In total, 822 jobs have been created by the construction programme, 716 of which have been filled by people from neighbouring communities.
“Of the 576 currently active construction jobs, 493 have been filled by local people.”
Gibela has also completed the first round of recruitment of full-time employees at the facility, successfully filling all 49 skilled and semi-skilled boilermaker and welder posts – as planned – with historically disadvantaged (HD) applicants from 13 communities neighbouring the plant.
To date, 73 learnerships and apprenticeships for the training centre have also been filled with historically disadvantaged applicants from Ekurhuleni metro communities.
In March, local HD small, medium and micro-sized enterprises (SMME), suppliers of plastering, painting, tiling and carpentry services submitted their profiles in order to be considered for work on the plant. A number of appointments have been made to 100% black and youth owned SMMEs while others have been shortlisted. Gibela has spent R128 million on local SMMEs to date.
“We believe communication with stakeholders is a priority and hold monthly meetings at our Stakeholder Engagement Forum,” says Radebe.
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