“I have mentioned this to my ministers, dozens of times until recently, because recently we have had an audit by the International Civil Aviation Organization, about safety issues in air transport and the word I use many times is, for God’s sake, let’s move quickly on some sectors, not to have Tempi air”, he characteristically said
The implementation of the general traffic regulation would have prevented the Tempe train accident, the former managing director of OSE (2001-2005) Kostas Giannakos and the managing director and general manager of ERGOSE (1996 -2004) Christos Tsitouras, with whom the first circle of witnesses for the period 1997-2004 opened.
Mr Giannakos said that the general traffic regulation provides for eight safety devices, in case remote control and signaling were not working, and “it is a question whether one of them was implemented” before the collision of trains in Tempe.
The general safety regulation is the “gospel” of the operation of the railway and it all starts from there, said Mr. Tsitouras: The error from the human factor, whether he raises a flag or presses a button or has to fix the programming, is important, said Mr. Tsitouras, who is currently the commander of the Civil Protection Authority.
When I learned about the accident, I “exploded,” said Mr. Giannakos. I am the son and grandson of railroad workers. I can’t understand how the train driver goes to the descent line and while he has a phone he doesn’t make an announcement that he was going up from the descent line, he said characteristically.
For his part, and Mr. Tsitouras, when asked how he felt upon hearing the news, said, visibly moved: I have mentioned it to my ministers, dozens of times until recently, because recently we have had control from the international civil aviation organization [..] on aviation security issues and the word I use a lot of times is, for God’s sake, let’s move quickly in some areas, not have Tempe air. I believe, he added, that if ERGOSE had been functioning properly all these years – I want to include my term in it – but also OSE, above all, had understood how serious the issue of maintenance is, everything would have been avoided. Of course, the first issue in everything is the responsibility of people, who are called to manage lives. So, the human factor is the first issue, which plays a role everywhere, and can save many situations, the second issue is that the safety rules must be observed, a subset of which is the maintenance of the systems Called by the chairman of the examination board, Dimitris Markopoulos, to refer to the trial in which he was accused, by the then chief signaling engineer Mr. Panagiotou, Mr. Giannakos said that both he and the rest of his co-accused were acquitted unanimously for a case related to the suburban “Piraeus- Athens-3 Bridges, and its signaling and electrification”. To Mr. Markopoulos’ question whether Mr. Panagiotou, who is a key witness for the European Public Prosecutor’s Office in the Tempe case, has become an unreliable witness, Mr. Giannakos answered in the affirmative.
Mr. Giannakos also referred to Ioannis Katsioulis (father) and Christos Katsioulis (son) saying that the first, after working for 15 years at OSE, resigned to work for one of the contractors of the projects, Bombardier, while the second worked for a period as a supervisor at ERGOSE: “You can easily find out if father and son Katsioulis had a personal benefit,” said Mr. Giannakos. On the same subject, Mr. Tsitouras said that “if this existed, father in contractor and son in control of contracts is a clear conflict of interest and should never have happened”.
Taking the floor, SYRIZA-PS MP Vassilis Kokkalis expressed his concern about the reasons the witnesses are being questioned about Mr. Panagiotou, while he invited the witnesses to comment on the Hellenic Train advertisement which – as he said – was talking about remote control in operation. To Mr. Kokkalis’ question whether this advertisement corresponds to reality, Mr. Tsitouras said that he has not seen it, and that from the facts one can conclude that of course not (it does not).
The investigative committee will meet again tomorrow Tuesday with the examination of the former Ministers of Transport & Communications Tassos Mantelis (1997-2000) and Christos Verelis (2000-2004), as well as – if it is possible in time – and Nikos Kurendas, managing director of ERGOSE (2005-2008).
Source: Skai
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