Another deadly train crash claims more victims this week, indicating the alarming level of deterioration in Egyptian railways, reports Pierre Loza Last Monday, exactly two weeks after the bloody train crash in the governorate of Qalyoubiya which left over 55 dead and many more injured, another one took place killing two people and injuring 36 near Shebin Al-Qanatir -- only few kilometers away from the first crash which happened on 21 August. Initial reports indicate that this week's collision was due to a technical problem which did not allow the train to shift from one track to another. The head-on collision between a cargo train and a passenger train on a single track rail line took place at approximately 9.20pm on 4 September. The passenger train was moving from Al-Marg station to the Shebin Al-Qanatir station, while the cargo train was heading to the mining area of Abu Zaabal from Shebin Al-Qanatir. On Monday evening the scene was one of chaos as rescue teams ran back and forth across the tracks, bringing everything from electric generators and spotlights to electric saws and tools in an effort to remove the overturned carriages and retrieve bodies. "We are taking every precaution to make sure we do not cause more damage to lives," the head of the civil defence rescue team told Al-Ahram Weekly. "But people have to understand that it's very dark here and our electric sawing equipment is not enough to get the train off the track and remove the remaining victims." The rescue operation which continued well into the early hours of the morning brought hundreds of villagers to the scene, some just to watch and others eager to help. Because the train tracks were surrounded by rice fields, it was near impossible to bring a forklift to the site. "We are bringing heavy lifting equipment across the rail road tracks because we run the risk of getting stuck if we bring them through the rice fields," said the official. Military police personnel who were clearly outnumbered, struggled to keep curious onlookers out of the rescue area. With this second train collision, casting a tall shadow of doubt over earlier official statements about the government's commitment to improving Egypt's Railway Service, the public debate over the safety of an increasingly dilapidated railway service is becoming more intense. On Monday morning, and hours before the crash took place, the Minister of Transport and Transportation, Mohamed Mansour, had a meeting with representatives of Egyptian railways employees, where he told them he was allocating LE13 million for monthly bonuses to underpaid workers, as well as promising to meet them on a monthly basis. The collision must have soured the message of hope the minister was trying to convey. "The coming period will witness a tangible improvement in all activities of the Railways Authority," Mansour had said following the meeting. Talking to the Weekly, the recently dismissed head of Egyptian Railways, Hanafi Abdel-Qawi, broke his silence regarding Qalyoub's collision of 21 August, saying his dismissal was a "political decision". "I have been made a scapegoat," said Abdel-Qawi, who is standing firm by his initial belief, that last month's collision, when a train from Mansoura rammed into the rear of a Cairo-bound Banha train at full speed, was due to human error. "In my personal opinion, the collision could have been due to a miscalculation on the part of the driver, the observation tower assistant or the signals technician," said Abdel-Qawi. Abdel-Qawi says that the fact that official statements made a day after the first crash about allocating billions of pounds to upgrading the service proves beyond doubt the fact that he was under- funded. "Although I expected my dismissal, I learned the news from the TV. I called the minister and he confirmed the news. I thanked him," Abdel-Qawi said. Abdel-Qawi denied reports that he was interrogated. He said he was simply asked to clarify matters to investigators. He also denied recent claims made in a report by the Central Auditing Authority that he had written off debts owed to his authority by a private company. "The chairman of Egypt Railways is not allowed to simply write off debts at whim. This happens according to certain regulations, ratified by the board of trustees. Plus, there is no such thing as writing off a debt. This could have been a penalty imposed on a private company that was later lifted," Abdel-Qawi said. With 70,000 employees in the Egyptian Railways Authority, Abdel-Qawi describes their less than favourable working conditions as a microcosm of the conditions of the country as a whole. "These are the financial constraints imposed by the government. And at the end of the day I had done my best and I have no regrets," he said. There was further controversy when a leading opposition newspaper published a story claiming that the technical expert appointed by the investigation committee into the Mansoura and Banha train collision to examine the information encoded inside the two trains' black boxes is being pressured into changing his findings. The Ministry of Transport and Transportation has dismissed the newspaper report, claiming that the technical expert in question, Abdel-Aziz Kamsheesh, will sue the newspaper for misinformation. However, Samir El-Beheiri, the writer of the article in question published in the Al-Wafd daily told Al-Ahram Weekly "I stand by my claim that Kamsheesh tendered his resignation because he was being pressured by high-ranking Railways Authority officials." According to El-Beheiri, Kamsheesh was instructed on several occasions to portray the accident as a result of human error and not a malfunction in the signaling system. El-Beheiri's story seems to agree with public statements made by Mahmoud El-Sisi, the head of the Train Drivers' Association, who also said that pressure was being applied to place the blame squarely on the Banha train driver currently under arrest. "How could they try him for abiding by what the signals indicated?" asked El-Sisi.
