The government spokesperson has recognized that the Greek public sector suffers from “chronic pathologies”.
mo12345lemonde with AFP
The station manager, implicated in the train accident in Greece which left at least 47 dead on Tuesday evening, “confessed an error,” said the spokesman for the Greek government, Yiannis Oikonomou, Thursday, March 2, during a press briefing, also recognizing “chronic weaknesses” of the Greek public railway sector.
“I think negligence, the error was admitted by the head of the station himself,” said Yiannis Oikonomou. A few minutes later, the 59 -year -old lawyer confirmed that he “recognizes what he did”. This man, who testified to the courts in Larissa, the closest to the place of the accident, was arrested the day before and was prosecuted for “homicides by negligence” on Thursday and for provoking “bodily injuries” Thursday. If he is found guilty, he risks life prison.
In the morning, he had to explain how a train carrying 342 passengers and ten employees of the railways, connecting Athens to Thessaloniki in the north of the country, could be authorized to take the same path as a convoy of goods. The two trains have come up against each other while they were on the same path for several kilometers.
mea culpa of the government
During the same press point, Yannis Oikonomou admitted that the public railway sector in Greece, whose failures are pointed out after the accident, experiences “chronic weaknesses”. “The delays [taken in the modernization of railways] have their origin in chronic pathologies of the Greek public sector, in decades of weakness,” he said.
At the same time, the new Minister of Greek transport, Giorgos Gerapetritis, apologized to the families of the victims, while making “a complete self -criticism of the political system and the State”. The former minister, Kostas Karamanlis, had presented his resignation on Wednesday.
On Wednesday, the president of the OSE train driver union, Kostas Genidounias, denounced the lack of security, according to him, on this line which links the two main cities of Greece. “All [signaling] is done manually. It is since the year 2000 that the systems do not work,” he has been in the ERT television channel. Previously, he had also assured the France-Presse (AFP) agency that “no security system, remote control and traffic fire worked”.
The accident left a total of 47 dead, according to a spokesperson for the Greek firefighters. And research operations, with 72 firefighters deployed, continued overnight. “We have continued [this night] because time is playing against us. The more time is the chances of the chances [to find survivors] are important,” a spokesperson for firefighters told AFP.