Following
recent train disasters, Transportation Minister Hatem Abdel-Latif tells
Shura Council that $71 million is needed - at least - to upgrade
Egypt's dangerously dilapidated railway infrastructure
Egypt's antiquated railway system requires an estimated LE170 million
(roughly $25.7 million) for spare parts and maintenance, Transportation
Minister Hatem Abdel-Latif said before the Shura Council (the upper
house of parliament) on Thursday.
Speaking in front of the council's transportation committee,
Abdel-Latif added that the necessary upgrade of train locomotives alone
would require some LE300 million (roughly $45.5 million).
The minister went on to point out that about 3,300 train carriages were
no longer fit for use, noting that Egypt had tentatively agreed to buy
221 new train carriages and had plans to purchase a further 336.
He also asserted that 171 train crossings nationwide would be subject to upgrade by the end of the current year.
Abdel-Latif's comments follow a massive rail accident on Tuesday in
which 19 passengers were killed and another 120 injured in Giza. And on
Wednesday night, four people were killed after a train collided with a
taxi at a rail crossing in the outskirts of Cairo.
Abdel-Latif concluded by citing a 2002 study – conducted in the wake of
a dramatic rail disaster in which 373 people died – that found that
between 100 and 120 Egyptians were killed every year in train accidents.
A
man walks beside the wreckage of a military train crash in the Giza
neighbourhood of Badrashin, about 40 km (25 miles) west of Cairo,
January 15, 2013. A train carrying young recruits to an police camp
derailed in a Cairo suburb on Tuesday, killing 19 people and injuring
107, Egypt's health ministry spokesman said. (Photo: REUTERS)