CAIRO - 21 March 2019: Deputy Transportation Minister Amr Shaat, who took post in 2018, formally submitted his resignation to the prime minister on Thursday, and informed newly appointed Transport Minister Kamel al-Wazir of his decision.
Sources said that the resignation has been accepted, according to media reports, while the reason behind Shaat's decision to resign has not been revealed yet.
This comes about a month after a horrible blaze took place in Cairo's Ramses Railway Station, killing 20 people according to official reports.
Shaat has served since February 2017, as an assistant transport minister for railways and metro affairs, which coincided with the appointment of Hesham Arafat, who resigned late in February following the Ramses blaze. He had then served as a deputy transportation minister, after he sworn in before President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi in August 2018.
Beside his job as deputy minister, Shaat had also served for three months as the head of the National Authority for Tunnels, before he was succeeded by Ahmed Fouda.
In late February, a train, with no driver on board, was seen moving at an extremely high speed and crashing into the platform's buffer stop at Cairo's busiest and main railway station, located in Ramses district.
The collision caused the explosion of the fuel tank and triggered a huge blaze. Police ordered taking DNA samples from the dead to know their relatives.
According to the initial investigations, the driver of the crashed train locomotive is mainly responsible for the accident.
Comments
Leave a Comment