Egypt’s Transport Minister, Hisham Arafat has resigned after a deadly train crash that claimed 20 lives and left about 40 others injured at Cairo’s central railway station.
The prime minister, Mostafa Madbouli, accepted the transport minister’s resignation, according to a statement by the cabinet.
On Wednesday morning, a train engine appeared to have slammed into the buffers at the end of the track at high speed, sparking a major blaze that blackened the walls of the Ramses station.
Firefighters were seen hosing down the charred wreckage of the train inside the station, as security forces guarded the site.
Egyptians have consistently complained about transport-related problems which have seemingly been ignored by the government.
Officials often blame the rail network’s poor maintenance on decades of negligence and a lack of funds.
Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouli, who was quick to visit the site, promised a tough response.
The government has repeatedly promised to take steps to upgrade the sector especially after several derailments and collisions in recent years.
Egypt signed a deal worth one billion euros ($1.14 billion) with a Russian-Hungarian consortium to deliver passenger coaches to Egypt in 2018.
The previous year it signed a $575 million deal with General Electric to purchase 100 locomotives.
Still, figures by the official statistics agency show there has been a 43 percent increase in train accidents between 2016 and 2017.
