“In the next two weeks, the problem with the issuance of personalized cards for the Thessaloniki Metro will have been fully addressed and the queues observed today at the ticket offices will disappear.”

This assessment was expressed in Parliament by the Minister of Infrastructure and Transport, Christos Staikourasnoting at the same time that there is an unexpected problem that the contractor French company is trying to solve and it concerns the synchronization of the systems.

As pointed out by Mr. Staikouras on the 11 days of operation of the Metro in Thessaloniki over 600,000 transfers have been made.

“The Thessaloniki Metro works well in terms of safety, travel time, attendance and population movement, already in 11 days there are over 600,000 transfers, but yes there are problems which we are trying to solve together with the contractor companies”said Mr. Staikouras responding to opposition MPs’ remarks about malfunctions observed in the Metro publishing houses.

“According to the data we had from the buses – the only means of public transport in Thessaloniki – it is necessary to issue about 50,000 personalized cards for students, unemployed for disabled people. From the first day, the issuing offices are operating, but they cannot issue 50,000 cards. About 20,000 have been released to date so some of the queues are due to the expected issues we’ve already highlighted. We estimate that the issue will be fully resolved in the next two weeks.”emphasized Mr. Staikouras and added:

“However, there are also unexpected problems which the contracting company is trying to solve and it has nothing to do with the supply of the machines but with the synchronization of the systems. The contractor is a French company, engineers are in Thessaloniki and they are trying to solve a problem that was not expected”.