Greek rail workers strike as anger grows over deadly crash
Protests erupt in Athens as death toll from train collision rises to 57
Rail workers across Greece are staging a 24-hour walkout today as the death toll from Tuesday’s train crash continues to climb.
At least 57 people are confirmed to have been killed, and dozens more are missing, after a passenger train and a freight train collided on the same stretch of track near the central city of Larissa. As rescue workers continue to search for survivors, the rail workers’ union blamed successive governments’ “disrespect” towards Greek railways for the tragedy.
Union bosses “said that their repeated calls for more permanent staff, more training, and the implementation of modern security technology had been ignored”, Reuters reported.
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Amid growing national anger, protestors “clashed” with police yesterday outside the Athens headquarters of Hellenic Train, “the company responsible for maintaining Greece's railways”, said the BBC.
A 59-year-old station master in Larissa has been charged with manslaughter and grievous bodily harm through negligence. He has denied any wrongdoing and has reportedly blamed the crash on a technical fault.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has promised a full, independent investigation into the “horrific rail accident without precedent in our country”. The crash appeared to be “mainly due to a tragic human error”, he said, but did not give further details.
Yiannis Ditsas, head of the railway workers union, told Skai TV that automatic signalling at the site of the crash had not been working. Kostas Genidounias, the president of the OSE train drivers’ union, told AFP that the “unimaginable” incident “would have been avoided if the safety systems were working”.
Transport Minister Kostas Karamanlis resigned yesterday, saying he was taking responsibility for the state’s “long-standing failures” to fix the country’s ageing railway network.
Around 350 people were on board the high-speed passenger train to Thessaloniki when the collision occurred. Many were students returning to university after a “long holiday weekend marking the beginning of Greek Orthodox lent”, said Athens-bsed paper Kathimerini.
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Richard Windsor is a freelance writer for The Week Digital. He began his journalism career writing about politics and sport while studying at the University of Southampton. He then worked across various football publications before specialising in cycling for almost nine years, covering major races including the Tour de France and interviewing some of the sport’s top riders. He led Cycling Weekly’s digital platforms as editor for seven of those years, helping to transform the publication into the UK’s largest cycling website. He now works as a freelance writer, editor and consultant.
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