Greece’s parliament on Wednesday set up a special committee to investigate the country’s deadliest train disaster that claimed 57 lives in February.
A majority of 266 lawmakers in the 300-seat chamber supported a motion by the Communist KKE party to investigate the accident.
“We will act as the voice of the dead, to showcase the causes and those guilty,” KKE general secretary Dimitris Koutsoumbas told parliament.
The fatal crash occurred shortly before midnight on February 28 when a passenger train crashed head-on into a freight train in central Greece, after both were mistakenly left running on the same track.
Most of the passengers were students returning from a holiday weekend.
Fifteen people have been prosecuted over the tragedy, including the stationmaster on duty during the accident, with several facing possible life sentences.
The disaster sparked weeks of angry and occasionally violent protests and saw the transport minister resign.
At the peak of the demonstrations, more than 65,000 people took to the streets nationwide demanding accountability and calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
Greece’s rail watchdog later found serious safety problems across the network, including inadequate basic training of critical staff.
Railway unions had long warned the network was underfunded, understaffed and accident-prone after a decade of spending cuts during the country’s 2009-2018 debt crisis.
Source: AFP
