The Fiji TimesNew Greek transport minister takes over, guarantees practice crash solutions

ATHENS (Reuters) – Greece’s newly-appointed transport minister stated he was taking up on Thursday with a mandate to research the nation’s deadliest practice crash, to modernize an ailing railway system and to revive security in practice journey.

“It’s a very heavy accountability,” Giorgos Gerapetritis instructed reporters throughout handover on the ministry.

The federal government has confronted harsh criticism for the state of its railway system since an intercity practice collided head-on with a cargo practice on Tuesday night time, killing at the very least 46 folks, a lot of them college students of their 20s, and injuring dozens.

“We’re going via days which might be really darkish for our nation,” Gerapetritis stated.

The catastrophe has led to a nationwide outpouring of grief and anger. On Thursday, trains have been delivered to a halt in a day of strike in opposition to what unions stated was successive governments’ refusal to listen to repeated calls for to enhance security requirements.

Gerapetritis stated the federal government was organising a committee of specialists to research “in a clear means” the explanations of the crash in addition to “the abnormalities, the passivity that has existed over time.”

The high-speed passenger practice collided with one other carrying transport containers, coming in the wrong way and on the identical observe, at speeds considered as much as 160 km (100 miles) per hour.

A station grasp was arrested as investigators tried to work out why the 2 trains had been on the identical observe.