Athens, March 9. Greek Prime Minister, conservative Kyriakos Mitsotakis, again asked Greeks for forgiveness on Thursday for the train tragedy that killed 57 people on March 1 and said he takes “political responsibility” for what happened.
“We don’t want to hide behind a series of human errors. If the work to install the remote control system had been completed, this accident would not have happened,” he said during a Council of Ministers.
However, Mitsotakis, in power since 2019, assured that the security problems of the rail network are also the fault of the former executives, an accusation to which the left-wing Syriza party, which led the previous government, responded.
“Mitsotakis must understand that he did not become prime minister the day before yesterday, but that he has been in power for four years,” replied Popi Tsapanidu, party spokesman.
Meanwhile, trains remain paralyzed across the country during the ninth day of the railway workers’ strike, which will continue the strike tomorrow.
Mitsotakis stressed that the railways should start operating “as soon as possible” with additional security measures and two station masters, instead of one, on each shift.
He also promised that modernization works on the Greek railway would be completed by the end of this summer.
In this sense, he said he had contacted the general manager of the French multinational Alshtom, with which the Greek State signed a contract in 2014 to improve signaling on the Athens-Thessaloniki section, where the accident occurred.
The work should have been completed in 2016 and some Greek media claim that the contract is under investigation by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, since it is 85% financed by Community funds.
More than 40,000 people, according to the police, and up to 60,000, according to some media, demonstrated yesterday in the center of Athens, to protest against the conservative government.
Although the Prime Minister stressed that the young people – who turned out in droves for the demonstration – “are absolutely right” to be angry, he said that “anger cannot become a new division for the country”.
The accident and the wave of indignation it triggered come a few weeks before the scheduled date of the next legislative elections, on April 9, even if, according to Greek media, the government is considering a postponement to May.
So far, the only person accused of the accident is the director of the station of Larisa, the city where the accident occurred, and who admitted before the prosecutor’s office to having put the passenger train on the same track than a convoy of goods arriving in the opposite direction.