New transport minister apologizes for train crash, promises answers
Greece’s newly-appointed transport minister said he was taking over on Thursday with a mandate to investigate the country’s deadliest train crash, to modernize an ailing railway system and to restore safety in train travel, while he apologized to the families of the victims.
Giorgos Gerapetritis took over as interim minister as the country heads to general elections in a couple of months.
“It is a very heavy responsibility,” Gerapetritis told reporters during handover at the ministry, adding however that he will not be involved in the daily management of the ministry. “The [deputy] ministers exist… who will continue to carry out the daily work.”
The government has faced harsh criticism for the state of its railway system since an intercity train collided head-on with a cargo train on Tuesday night, killing at least 46 people, many of them students in their 20s, and injuring dozens.
“We are going through days that are truly dark for our country,” Gerapetritis said.
The disaster has led to a national outpouring of grief and anger. On Thursday, trains were brought to a halt in a day of strike against what unions said was successive governments’ refusal to hear repeated demands to improve safety standards.
“Since we are facing a real tragedy, I want, first of all, to apologize to the families of the people who were lost, as an overall self-criticism of the entire political system and the state, and I sincerely want, to look them in the eyes and say that this difficult and distressing work will continue until it is finished. Everything will be investigated,” he told the press.
Gerapetritis said the government was setting up a committee of experts to investigate “in a transparent way” the reasons of the crash as well as “the abnormalities, the passivity that has existed over time.”
The high-speed passenger train collided with another carrying shipping containers, coming in the opposite direction and on the same track, at speeds thought to be up to 160 km (100 miles) per hour. A station master was arrested as investigations continued to establish what went wrong.
[Reuters, Kathimerini]
