11/24/2023 0 Comments Matthaios iconie facebookThe government retained the infrastructure management through the state-owned company, OSE, ensuring that the public monopoly of passenger trains became a private one, sold to the Italian state-owned company Ferrovie dello Stato. Contrary to the expansion of the railway network across Europe and the introduction there of upgraded safety measures, the Greek railway network actually shrunk. Railway privatization, a bailout obligation imposed by the infamous troika of lenders more than ten years ago, led to a split between railway infrastructure companies and rail service providers. They are the result of a program that invests in the bankruptcy of public assets, only to reintroduce them as private monopolies, while it guarantees political support through clientelism and neglect.Įxcept for the single line that connects the two major cities in the north and the south, railways have never been a significant part of Greece’s transport system. These outdated and unsafe conditions are the product of neoliberalism. One of the main pillars of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, funded by the EU with billions of euros, is the digitization of public services.īut thanks to an ongoing cut to the workforce, Greek train engine drivers remain overworked and dealing with old equipment, poor safety measures, and only makeshift interpersonal communication. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s government boasts that it is modernizing the state through the (belated) introduction of digital systems and the opening of markets through deregulation. Once it came into government, New Democracy passed an anti-labor law that made most strikes illegal, gagging workers’ efforts to sound the alarm about railway safety. Since the Greek bailout, a consistent feature of conservatives has been the demonization of the unions. Last week, the European Commission referred Greece to the European Court of Justice for failure to comply with the rules of railway transport. Three similar accidents on the same route had already occurred in 2022, though without any fatalities, and there have been thirty-seven safety incidents in total during the past ten years. At the time of the accident, however, there were less than seven hundred fifty. Nonetheless, the mainstream media, complicit in the tragedy, ignored all the alarm bells.Īccording to the railway company’s own organizational chart, there should be at least two thousand workers employed to maintain standards. In April 2022, the head of ETCS (the European Train Control System) resigned over concerns for the security of the carriers and the public. In an official notice sent on February 7 to the Hellenic Railways Organisation (OSE), unions described the state of disrepair on the railway system and warned management of forthcoming industrial action: “We are not going to wait for the coming accident to see them shedding crocodile tears and making declarations.” A series of union notices publicly warned of danger. Greece’s railway unions predicted the accident in advance, weeks before it happened. There were plenty of indications that a severe accident was around the corner. Now millions in Greece are asking: How was it possible that two trains could travel for all of twelve kilometers on the same railway line, in opposite directions, without anyone noticing? Why weren’t telematics or other safety measures in place? Worker Unions Rang the Alarm It is unlikely that some victims’ remains will ever be retrieved others will only be identified through DNA testing. The force of the impact generated temperatures high enough to melt steel. The passenger train was traveling at 160 km/h when it collided head-on with a cargo train moving at 110 km/h. The collision was one of Europe’s deadliest rail accidents in a decade. The majority of the fifty-seven fatalities (the exact number is still unclear) were young students, either on their way back to the University of Thessaloniki or returning home from a trip to Athens after a three-day break. The devastating railway accident near the Vale of Tempe in central Greece, which lies between Athens and Thessaloniki, has had a profound impact on the nation.
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