After Wednesday’s train disaster in Greece, in which two trains collided while traveling on the same track and in which at least 43 people were killed and 85 were injured, large protests were staged in several cities across the country.
The largest protest took place in the capital, Athens, where the demonstrators, especially young people and university students, marched in front of the parliament and the seat of Hellenic Train, the company that manages rail transport in Greece and which since 2016 has been privately owned and controlled by the Italian State Railways. Here there were clashes with the police, who used tear gas and stun grenades to repel the crowds.
Protesters argue that the incident could have been avoided if the government of the current prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and his predecessors had done more to improve the country’s railway system: they criticized above all the poor state of infrastructure, considered very backward and with technologies not up to par with a European country, and the shortage of personnel. Other well-attended protests were organized in Thessaloniki, in the north-east of the country, and in Larissa, which is about 20 kilometers from Tempes, the city where the incident took place.
There were also protests from the railway workers’ unions, who announced Thursday as a one-day strike across the country. The workers of the Athens Metro will do the same. “Unfortunately, the demands we have been making for a long time for the recruitment of more staff, for better training and above all for the use of modern security technologies always end up in the waste paper bin,” the unions said in a statement.
In the meantime, the search for possible survivors continues among the wreckage of the trains: rescuers and firefighters have been working since Wednesday digging with cranes among the sheet metal of the wagons, but there is very little hope that among the missing there is still anyone alive. Of the injured, 57 are still hospitalized, and of these 6 are in intensive care, while the others have been discharged.
The station master of the Larissa station, responsible for the section of railway where the accident occurred, remains under arrest, detained by the police on Wednesday afternoon because it is suspected that his mistake contributed to the accident. The charges against him will be formalized on Thursday.