The Ayyat train crash in Egypt and huge explosions in Iraq took a great deal of lives. Doaa El-Bey opens an investigation The collision of two trains in Ayyat put Minister of Transportation Mohamed Mansour in the hot seat. Mohamed Ali Ibrahim called on Mansour to resign. He wrote in the official daily Al-Gomhuriya that although Mansour was a hard worker, in the end, he had not succeeded in his job probably because the railway problems are bigger than his abilities or that they need a person who does not ascribe a catastrophe to a mistake or the negligence of drivers. Mansour responded to Ibrahim's call and resigned on Tuesday. Mansour had more than LE5 billion from the government, in addition to another LE20 billion as loans in order to develop the railway system. The writer asked what he did with all this money. He bought more train cars, but failed to improve the security systems of the trains. Train accidents are likely, Ibrahim added, but we should give ample attention to security factors more than decorating the trains and train stations. May be the accident was due to the negligence of a driver, but we need to take all necessary measures to persuade people that we care about their lives. They might then accept these accidents as fate. "People are fed up with excuses and scapegoats. You espoused a policy which ignored security factors in trains. That is why I ask you to resign, Mr Minster," Ibrahim wrote. Abdallah Kamal wrote that it is everybody's right -- including himself -- to hold the Ministry of Transportation responsible for the accident. But in an attempt to look at the accident in a more objective manner, the writer pointed a finger at the human element involved in the accident; the laxity of train drivers. "When we look at the administrative responsibility in an accident, we should not ignore the negligence of drivers and their inattention to passenger safety," Kamal wrote in the daily newspaper Rose El-Youssef. These drivers took training courses and have control systems. However, they either break these systems or are preoccupied with arranging strikes against their employees to use them. Thus, he called on the railway institution to deal strictly with inefficiency regardless of the reaction, especially because there is a trend inside the institution to oppose any form of reform. And this, the writer summed up, could lead to more catastrophes. In a brief analysis of the crash, Mohamed Mustafa Shordi wrote that a poor mentality led to a human mistake, then to a catastrophe. A train driver who hit a buffalo stopped the train to remove the remains from the rails. He did not think about the train following his, or consider notifying the control room that he stopped. As a result, a fatal accident took the lives of dozens of citizens. This, the writer explained, is negligence embodied. The railway institution claimed that it developed the railway system, trained the drivers, gave them communication devices and established control rooms. Shordi asked why these developments did not help avert such an accident. Instead, the train driver acted like a tok-tok driver. Shordi shed light on the deficient performance of the government in times of crises. The government does not have protocols to administer any crisis. In the Ayyat incident, the ambulances came to the scene of the accident before officials, locals volunteered to help carry the patients to the ambulances, the dead and injured were transported to a number of hospitals and the families of the dead and injured toured the hospitals in search of their family members. Havoc was supreme. "We are in need of a system, a general culture that can deal with these situations so that these catastrophes are not repeated," Shordi wrote in the daily Al-Wafd, mouthpiece of the opposition Wafd Party. Swine flu was still a major concern especially after Minister of Health Hatem El-Gabali declared in an interview with the official daily Al-Ahram that most schools were not ready to combat the danger. They are not clean enough, they do not have isolation rooms and garbage is still everywhere in and around them. Nevertheless, he said it was unlikely to close schools down until 300 cases per day are reported. An Al-Ahram editorial said the question that worries all Egyptians at present is whether schools will indeed close. The answer is "no" however the public has every right to worry about their children because there is justified doubt about the possibility of Internet education as a substitute for face-to-face school education. But officials were clear: schools will not be closed unless conditions appear that require it. We hope these conditions would not come about and that winter will pass with the least number of cases. Still, the edit added, we should take all necessary precautions to protect our children. We could, for instance, close schools that have some cases, for a week or two. They can later resume their activities after that period in a healthy and sound atmosphere. The loss of a genuine opportunity to sign a reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas this week was lamented by Wahid Abdel-Meguid who regarded the wasted opportunity as the last chance for reconciliation. He blamed the loss on Hamas which failed to exercise some flexibility. "We were never closer to an agreement as we are now after Egyptian mediators managed to bridge the gap between Fatah and Hamas and reach formulas acceptable to both parties," he wrote in Al-Wafd. The greatest achievement according to the writer was finding a formula for cooperation between Ramallah and Gaza until elections are held after the two parties failed to reach an agreement on a national unity government. That was achieved via an Egyptian formula to establish a committee that would coordinate work among ministries on both sides. The committee was supposed to pave the way for elections and national reconciliation and prepare for the process of rebuilding Gaza. Egyptian mediation also managed to resolve differences between the two parties regarding the re- establishment of security bodies on a professional basis as well as the issue of political prisoners, the writer added.
