MPs to grill minister on rail chaos

Wednesday 20 January 2010

Transport minister Camiel Eurlings faces a grilling from MPs on Wednesday when he appears in parliament to answer questions about the chaos on the railways during the recent wintry weather.

Dutch Rail (NS) and the railway maintenance company ProRail are both state-owned companies and fall under the minister's responsibilities.

The heavy snow led to numerous cancellations and passengers being urged to avoid the railways altogether for several days. Some one million people in the Netherlands use the trains on a daily basis.

According to the Volkskrant, MPs want to know why the Dutch rail network ground to a halt after 20cm of snow while other countries were relatively unaffected.

ProRail director Bert Klerk has already said the company was ill-prepared for the winter. 'We did not do our job properly,' he is quoted as telling RTL news.

Many of the problems were caused by ProRail's decision to switch off the point warming systems for maintenance, three days before the first snow hit, RTL said.

© DutchNews.nl

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