The close relationship between the operator and the Kirchner regime is being highlighted
FOR MOST Argentinians the shock provoked by Wednesday’s train crash in Buenos Aires was due to the high number of fatalities, but otherwise there was a sense of deja vu at yet another accident on the country’s dilapidated rail network.
Fifty people were killed and more than 700 injured when a morning commuter train on the Sarmiento line slammed into the platform at Once station.
Most of those who died were standing in the front two carriages, waiting to jump down onto the platform and rush back to work after the four-day carnival holiday. It is the deadliest rail accident in Argentina since 1978 and the third worst ever.
More troubling for the hundreds of thousands of commuters who use the capital’s suburban network every day is that Wednesday’s crash is the latest evidence that mismanagement, official negligence and a lack of investment are putting the lives of passengers at risk almost two decades after privatisation was supposed to herald the modernisation of Argentina’s rail system.
In the year leading up to Wednesday’s disaster, there were five serious incidents on Buenos Aires trains, killing 15 and leaving almost 800 injured. Eight more passengers were killed in other parts of the country.
Trenes de Buenos Aires (TBA), the private operator of the Sarmiento line, has promised an investigation, but by yesterday was already hinting that the train’s 28-year-old the driver, who was seriously injured in the crash, might have been at fault. But rail union leader Edgardo Reinoso condemned TBA as “a company marked by a lack of maintenance, a lack of foresight and improvisation across the service”.
Opposition leaders were quick to highlight long-standing accusations of safety violations at TBA. As far back as 2004, Argentina’s state auditor said TBA had failed to provide details of the maintenance it was required to carry out as part of its concession. An auditor’s report from 2008 cited a litany of problems found with braking equipment on the company’s trains.
The auditor’s office said TBA ignored requests for clarification but that the government took no action and continued to pay large subsidies to the company – €25 million last year along with a further €13 million in January.
Opposition deputy Fernando Solanas said he had alerted the administration of President Cristina Kirchner to the problems at TBA.
“For a number of years President Cristina Kirchner listened to, read and saw these complaints and did nothing,” said the deputy in an interview with local media after the crash.
For the government there was a populist return for the subsidy it provided TBA. The half-million passengers that use the Sarmiento line each day pay some of the lowest rail fares in the world – on average €0.17 per trip.
The fares are so low that even with the state subsidy there is insufficient cash to reverse the decay across much of the system.
Despite new double-decker carriages inaugurated on the Sarmiento line last year, many of its trains date back to the 1950s.
President Kirchner issued a statement expressing condolences and cancelled her public appearances until next Tuesday. But her decision to drop out of the public eye has not stopped close scrutiny of her administration’s close relationship with TBA and its owners, the Cirigliano family.
Local media have highlighted the fact that while other private train operators have had their concessions revoked by the Kirchner administration for failure to invest in their concessions, the Ciriglianos’ transport empire has expanded rapidly under President Kirchner and her husband and predecessor Néstor Kirchner.
In 2009 Ricardo Jaime, the Kirchners’ first transport secretary, was forced to resign following allegations of corruption. Among other revelations, he was said to be taking paid trips from the Ciriglianos and using their private jet for free while responsible for monitoring their management of rail concessions.
Despite the state auditor’s concerns over TBA management, when the government renationalised the Roca and San Martín lines in Buenos Aires, Jaime handed over day-to-day operation of the lines to TBA.
Now the opposition says the close relationship between the Ciriglianos and the administration is responsible for the failure to properly regulate the Sarmiento line and helped provoke Wednesday’s disaster. “Hopefully we Argentinians can learn, once and for all, that corruption and impunity kill, as we have seen with this new tragedy,” said opposition leader Elisa Carrió.