WATANI International
1 November 2009
Last Wednesday the Minister of Transportation Mohamed Mansour resigned his post following a tragic train accident which took place at Ayyat, south of Cairo, on Saturday 24 October. Eighteen passengers lost their lives and 36 were injured. The crash was caused by an errant water buffalo that wandered onto the tracks. The first passenger train stopped after hitting the buffalo and was then rear ended by a second train going at full speed.
Two days before he resigned Mansour had referred 34 officials from the National Railway Authority to an investigative committee looking into the tragic collision. Three railway workers were charged with involuntary manslaughter after two trains collided at Ayyat, south of Cairo. The office of the general prosecutor says the two conductors and a third man who was supposed to be monitoring the tracks but allegedly abandoned his post were also charged with damaging public interest. All three were detained.
Chairman of the Transportation Committee at Parliament Hamdy Al-Tahhan said that the National Railway System is in dire need of fundamental changes. “The accident shows that there are faults in the system that have not yet been dealt with,” he said.
Mansour had attributed the accident to “human error” and said it was not the responsibility of the entire transport system.
In an official statement, the Ministry of Transportation said it will pay compensation to the victims’ families instantly, allocating EGP20,000 to the families of those who died and EGP5,000 to those injured. The Ministry of Social Solidarity and the Sixth of October town council pledged to pay an additional EGP10,000 to the families of the dead and EGP1,500 to those injured.
Al-Ayyat witnessed the deadliest of a series of railway accidents in 2002, when a train heading to southern Egypt caught fire, killing some 363 people.