A report by the Ministry of Transport's railway safety unit has identified 20 causes for train accidents during the year 2009 and the first half of 2010. The report was sumbitted to the ministry's head Mohamed Alaa Fahmy.
Negligence and under-qualified personnel at watchtowers and maintenance workshops, as well as cracked wheels, ineffective railway crossings and electrical short circuits are among the causes cited.
The report also points to illegally installed, insecure and out-dated crossings.
Some central control systems are dysfunctional, and lack ultra-sonic sets that help detect cracked wheels, according to the report. The report also highlights a failure in testing train brakes, a lack of high-tech systems for temperature measuring, and an insufficient supply of spare parts.
Fires in trains were caused by failure to isolate power cables linking wagons, the report says, which criticizes procrastination in analyzing feedback of on-location technicians.
An official source at the Egyptian National Railways (ENR) said that the new report raised the concerns of the transport minister. The report says Fahmy, in an attempt to encourage better performance, doled out extra bonuses every three months for hard-working sector heads that managed to improve their services in terms of decreasing accidents, ensuring trains cleanliness and operating effectively.
The source noted that other, preliminary reports reveal a drop in daily, minor incidents.
Egypt has a history of train crashes–the last of which occurred near the city of Ayyat in October 2009, killing 30, injuring 50 and ousting former Transport Minister Mohamed Lotfy Mansour from office.
A February 2002, train fire claimed the lives of 373 passengers headed to Aswan in Egypt's most fatal train catastrophe. Seventy percent of the bodies could not be identified.
ِAnother notorious incident came in October 1998 in Kafr al-Dawar, Beheira when a train derailed and stormed through the city’s market, killing around 100 and injuring more than 250.
On Saturday, Fahmy spearheaded an unsuccessful attempt to communicate with train conductors via satellite.
Translated from the Arabic Edition.
