CAIRO: Egyptians are rejoicing after 8 Egyptian railway workers were charged in the October train crash that left 18 people dead and more than 50 injured. They will go on trial, in a date yet to be set, a judicial official has said. The group, which includes two train conductors and three signalmen, will face charges of “negligence and involuntary manslaughter.” The accident occurred when one train slammed into a second that had stopped unexpectedly in the tracks. Reports on the accident say that the conductor of the stopped train failed to notify the oncoming train, which resulted in the crash. Heavy lifting equipment was needed in order to untangle the wreckage of the trains, some 30 miles south of Cairo. With at least 4 major crashes killing around 500 people and injuring scores more in a seven-year period, questions are being asked – not for the first time – about why Egypt’s trains have such a poor safety record, and what is to be done about the issue, if anything. In this new age of digital media, Twitter broke news of the latest crash, and in a matter of hours grizzly images of the wreckage had been posted to social photo site Flickr. 10 years ago, it would have been unlikely that a crash where no foreign nationals were killed would be deemed especially newsworthy, however these days the whole incident, complete with gruesome videos of crowds surrounding twisted metal, is available from hundreds of different sources at the click of a mouse. One effect of such increased visibility on the international scene – Egypt’s economy is precariously reliant on tourism – is that someone must be held accountable. In a quick-fire move to stem the tide of negative press, and to give the appearance that something is being done to change the pattern of disasters on Egyptian railways, long-serving transport minister Mohammed Mansour handed his resignation to President Hosni Mubarak, claiming the political responsibility for the accident. The resignation came after a high-tempered meeting of the Parliament’s transportation committee, where various MPs called for Mansour’s dismissal. One MP, Hussein Ibrahim, went so far as to accuse the former Minister of Transport of repeating the same excuse after each disaster: “It was the dead driver’s fault.†Mansour, according to reports, responded by suggesting that human fault was unavoidable and something like this “could happen in any country.†He also noted that in the past, drivers had been found to have disabled the automatic warning system, used around the world to prevent the kind of accident witnessed this week. It remains unclear as to whether such a system is functionally in place, or whether it had been disabled by the driver, but what is clear is that an automated system that prevents two trains on the same line from being too close to one another would have prevented the deaths of over 30 people, and dozens more injured. Mansour’s resignation was greeted with scepticism by locals and analysts alike, with commentator The Arabist voicing his opinion on Twitter: “Prediction: Mansour will be lauded in newspapers and TV channels for resigning, and people will forget about the train disaster.†Cairene bank worker Ahmed Khalil agreed, adding, “if 18 foreigners had been killed then the government would be quick to act, but who cares about poor farmers travelling back to Assiut – no changes will happen soon.†Soon after the incident, two train conductors and another man who allegedly left his monitoring post were charged with involuntary manslaughter, and have been taken into custody. While punishing those responsible for the disaster is a priority, there has been little talk of systemic change that could eliminate the margin for human error, and lend a much-needed boost to Egypt Rail’s safety record. Compensation for victims (20,000LE/$3,600 for a death, 5,000LE/$900 for injury), resignation of ministers and punishment of conductors is simply not enough, and will not help avoid future incidents, most analysts and observers argue. Earlier this summer, another major disaster was avoided when a train failed to brake on arrival in Alexandria, crashing at speed into the main Mahatet Masr station. The relatives of those killed in the most recent incident are asking why lessons weren’t learned from what happened in Alexandria, or Mersa Matrouh before that, or Qalyoub before that, or what happened in the same district of al-Ayat, a little over seven-years ago. The next minister will have a large task ahead if he or she is to move quickly to avoid next year’s fatal disaster. BM
