Rail services were paralyzed by a strike on Thursday in Greece, where angry protests are mounting two days after the deadly head-on collision between two trains, despite the mea culpa of the government acknowledging “chronic” railroad outages.
“It’s not a mistake, it’s a crime,” the front page of the Journal summarized the editors’ (left) shock and, above all, the anger that prevailed among the population when the station master confessed in court after his arrest on Wednesday after he made a “mistake”.
The trains actually traveled several kilometers on the same track connecting Athens with Thessaloniki (north), Greece’s two largest cities, before colliding head-on just before midnight on Tuesday, killing at least 57 people, according to police.
“The systems have not worked since the year 2000”
“The dead of Tempé demand answers,” headlined the liberal Kathimerini, alluding to the location near the city of Larissa (centre) where the accident happened.
At the same time, trains stopped running on Thursday after a confederation call for a strike that brought rail unions together to “denounce the governments’ lack of respect for Greek railways, which has led to this disaster. The movement was renewed for the day on Friday.
“Unfortunately, our constant demands for permanent staff, better training, but above all for the introduction of modern security technologies have finally been thrown into the trash,” complained these organizations. The President of the Union of Train Drivers OSE, Kostas Genidounias, highlighted the lack of safety on the line where the collision occurred. “Everything (signalling) is done manually. The systems haven’t worked since the year 2000,” he said.
The trade union representatives of the railway company Hellenic Train sounded the alarm about this three weeks ago. “We will not wait for the accident to happen to see those responsible shed crocodile tears,” they warned.
“Privatization Kills”
In the evening, after a stormy first rally the day before, hundreds of people protested outside the Athens headquarters of Hellenic Train, a company bought by Italian public company Ferrovie Dello Stato Italiane (FS) in 2017 as part of the privatization program demanded by Greece’s creditors during of the economic crisis (2009-2018).
Residents of Larissa also demonstrated, carrying banners that read: “Privatization kills. Around 2,000 demonstrators gathered in Thessaloniki on Thursday evening. Stones were thrown and Molotov cocktails were thrown at the demonstration, but “calm has now returned,” said a police spokesman.