CAIRO - Train services were back to normal on Saturday, after being disrupted for several hours due to a drivers' sit-in. Hundreds of train drivers Saturday launched a sit-in over financial incentives, bringing train services in the Delta and Upper Egypt to a halt. Drivers, taking part in the strike at Ramses Railway Station in the heart of Cairo, told el-Youm el-Sabea online that were not satisfied with the new incentive system, created by the Egyptian Railway Authority. They said that the new structure of incentives is unfair, as it favours some at the expense of others. Later in the day, Chairman of the ERA, Hani Hegab, told the official news agency MENA that train services had resumed, after being suspended for a few hours, because they stopped their sit-in. As for the incentives, Hegab said that they have been raised as far as possible, acccording to the ERA's budget from the Finance Ministry. Drivers were also furious over the death of a fellow driver in an accident south of Cairo last week. Six people were killed and 12 others injured last Thursday in a collision between an express train and a lorry loaded with red bricks in the town of el-Fashn in Beni Sueif Governorate, about 120km south of Cairo. The driver was killed and the co-driver knocked unconscious by flying bricks, as the train continued careering along the track for another 3km. The train, No. 872, travelling from Cairo to Assiut, split the truck into two .The limbs and other body parts of the late driver were strewn along the track, while train services were suspended for about 10 hours. A series of road and rail accidents in Egypt in recent years has triggered an outcry over the Government's handling of transport safety. In 2002, el-Ayyat, south of Cairo, was the scene of Egypt's worst rail disaster when fire ripped through seven carriages of an overcrowded passenger train, killing at least 360 people. According to some sources, as many as 600 people may have died in the tragedy. A train crash in the Delta killed 44 people in 2008, two years after another crash that killed 58 people.
