Good morning! After the terrible rail tragedy in Greece, we must ask ourselves what condition our railway infrastructure is.
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Are we facing a railway tragedy?
In Greece, two trains collided in the village of Evangelismos on Tuesday. Those were a passenger and a cargo train. A total of 57 people were killed in the accident, and 85 were injured. Immediately after the accident, public gatherings followed as victim commemoration, but there were also violent protests in Athens, Thessaloniki and Larisa. Railway workers’ strike is also launched due to poor working conditions. As a result, followed the resignation of Minister of Traffic Kostas Karamanlis, who said he felt responsibility for the death of people because he had failed to raise rail standards at the level of the 21st century.
In Bioce, in January 2006, the train travelled from Bijelo Polje to Bar and flew off the rails. A total of 46 people were killed in the accident and 139 were injured. The then transport minister Andrija Lompar resigned, and due to the accident, only the engine driver was sentenced to six years in prison, while eleven railway managers were acquitted.
Today, Ervin Ibrahimovic is at the head of the Ministry of Capital Investments, which is responsible for traffic. At the head of the railway transport is Slaven Sestovic. Dragoljub Radosevic, Miralem Redzepagic, Zeljko Miladinovic, Novak Sokic and Marko Bertanjoli sit in the Board of Directors. Railway infrastructure is managed by the executive director Marina Boskovic, and the members of the Board of Directors are Radovan Vukic, Ljubisa Curcic, Novo Nikcevic, Vladimir Merdovic and Nedeljko Susakavcevic.
These are data from sites that can be barely loaded, so if there have been no personnel changes, which happens these days, these people are considered responsible for the questions I will ask.
For this reason, all these people and the Prime Minister should be asked if the new Bioce accident awaits us and whether they can answer the following questions:
Are we driven by proper and safe trains?
Is there even a single station on the Bijelo Polje-Bar trail route where all signal-security devices are proper? Given that the first results of the investigation indicate that the signaling is one of the possible reasons for the accident, this issue is very important.
Are these data correct?
Travel transitions – only 3 out of 9 are in good condition. The number of inter-station distance where the transport is carried at regular speeds is 2 out of 17. The number of stations with proper safety devices is 0 out of 17. The number of trains that arrived in time in the past month at the Bar – Bijelo Polje section is 0 out of 240.
Is the recently repaired station in Podgorica technically completely safe? Is the signal balise from the direction of Bar operational? Balise is a safety device that should stop the train if it tries to pass through the red light without approval.
Given that in the accident in Greece, a freight train took part, we could ask what is going on with MonteCargo and whether the members of the board of directors who have close relations with the top of Serbia introduce a private company from Serbia? Are we bringing ZICG to bankruptcy so that we could leave it to someone from Serbia to whose quality of work, even if we wanted, we could not affect?
So much for today for this week. See you again on Monday.
Kind regards,
Ljubomir Filipovic, analyst and CdM columnist
(Opinions and attitudes of authors are not necessarily the views of the CdM editorial office)
