Achievements overshadow accountability: Five hours of Al-Wazir yield few answers on Al-Ayyat crash

Transport Minister Kamel Al-Wazir spent five hours before the House Transport Committee on Tuesday defending his ministry’s balance sheet, sidestepping questions of direct political accountability for the Al-Ayyat train crash crash that left seven dead and 125 injured, according to official Health Ministry tallies.

Convened as an urgent hearing to establish the causes of Sunday’s disaster, the session shifted from institutional oversight into a catalog of railway modernization projects. While pro-government deputies lined up to praise the minister’s field record and insisted on deferring all scrutiny to the Public Prosecution’s ongoing criminal inquiry, a handful of opposition figures and independent MPs pressed for Al-Wazir’s immediate resignation.

Committee Chair Waheed Qarqar opened the emergency meeting by calling for a minute of silence. Setting the boundaries of the discussion, Qarqar insisted the proceedings were intended to fulfill the House’s oversight function without "leveling premature accusations" or prejudging the judicial probe. All deputies, Qarqar announced, would be permitted the floor—provided interventions remained strictly within parliamentary decorum and avoided personal attacks.

Al-Wazir expresses grief

Al-Wazir opened with condolences to the victims’ families and wished the wounded a swift recovery, framing the disaster as a national trial requiring solidarity between state institutions and citizens. He urged the public to act with discipline, warning against rumors designed to stir public division.

Turning to his personal burden, the minister insisted that passenger safety remained the guiding principle of his tenure. "I am grieved and deeply shaken if even one person dies or a single fingernail is lost," he told the committee.

He then recounted an exchange with an unnamed acquaintance who had urged him not to take the disaster to heart: "You are bearing too much. Thirteen people died in the recent microbus accident, whereas your accident claimed only seven. Why react like this?"

Al-Wazir told the committee his reply was: "That is simply who I am. What happened is painful to me."

The ‘achievements hour’

With the expressions of personal grief concluded, Al-Wazir spent the next hour detailing the technical expansion of the national rail network. He reviewed signaling system upgrades, grade-crossing modernization, track duplication, and revised personnel hiring protocols at the Egyptian National Railways Authority (ENRA).

On the workforce, Al-Wazir stressed that no applicant would be appointed without clearing every stage of the recruitment pipeline—including mandatory security vetting—insisting that these screening procedures applied uniformly, without exception or favoritism.

The financial scope of this modernization plan, drawn up upon his appointment in March 2019, was initially budgeted at 225 billion Egyptian pounds (then roughly $13.4 billion at an exchange rate of 16.82 EGP to the dollar). By 2026, he noted, that figure had climbed to approximately 810 billion pounds (around $15.9 billion at 50.90 EGP to the dollar).

External loans earmarked for railway ventures stood at approximately $5.1 billion, Al-Wazir stated, describing them as soft financing carrying interest rates between 0.15% and 1.7%, with grace periods extending to 10 years and repayment terms of up to 30 years. Domestic borrowing added another 64 billion pounds (roughly $1.18 billion).

According to the minister, 11 projects worth $1.065 billion have been concluded, with another 12 projects, budgeted at $4.039 billion, currently under execution. Citing Central Bank figures from June 30, Al-Wazir emphasized that foreign loans taken on by the rail sector represent just 1.3% of the state's total external debt.

Addressing public wages across the sector, Al-Wazir acknowledged that “government salaries satisfy no one.” He pointed to monthly incentive programs introduced by the ministry, offering bonuses of up to 6,000 pounds ($110) for senior engineers and standout staff, and up to 2,000 pounds ($37) for line workers.

The majority rallies behind the podium

The majority of committee interventions moved to shield the minister, deflecting calls for his removal and steering attention back to the administration's infrastructural record.

MP Mostafa Bakry was among the minister’s supporters. He said Al-Wazir had addressed several questions of public concern, particularly those involving loans for railway development, how the funds had been spent and which projects had been completed under the development plan.

Citing data from the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS), Bakry asserted that rail collisions dropped 22.7% between the 2023–24 fiscal cycle and 2025. Criticisms directed at the minister, Bakry suggested, amounted to an orchestrated campaign "aimed at character assassination, perhaps driven by motives known to others."

Nader El-Khobeiry, a member of the Transport Committee and MP for the Al-Ayyat constituency, echoed the majority's position, praising Al-Wazir’s habit of unannounced site visits and his appearance at the crash scene. El-Khobeiry noted that several injured passengers had been riding on the exterior of the carriages due to severe overcrowding, concluding that the practical remedy lay in expanding fleet capacity.

Committee member Christine Adel added that while the accident was deeply painful, it should not overshadow the work being carried out on the ground. The fundamental challenge, she argued, lay in developing a trained, qualified workforce whose members demonstrate integrity, responsibility and an understanding of their duties.

Most lawmakers focused on the need to await the Public Prosecution’s findings rather than prejudge the investigation, while also praising development projects in the transport sector.

Calls for resignation and political accountability

Independent deputies and the minority parliamentary opposition sharply rebuked the session's procedural focus, arguing the committee had traded statutory oversight for an executive briefing.

Mahmoud Samy El-Emam, head of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party’s parliamentary bloc, called on Al-Wazir to resign, emphasizing that his demand concerned political, not criminal, responsibility.

Addressing the minister, El-Emam said: “I am asking you, Your Excellency, as your brother, above all else, to submit your resignation immediately to the prime minister. The prime minister or the political leadership must weigh whether you should remain in office to complete the remaining work or whether they should respond to the anger of the Egyptian public.”

“I am pleading with you,” El-Emam continued. “I will not call for your dismissal, because dismissal means the matter is over, whereas you still have some credit with the public. I am asking you to submit your resignation today, after the committee concludes its meeting, and leave it to the political leadership to decide what it wants to do.”

Independent MP Hassan Ammar similarly questioned why the emergency hearing had been turned into a promotional platform for ministry achievements while basic technical answers remained missing.

“We all know the achievements and the work that has been done, but I came here to find out what caused the accident. The role of Parliament, particularly in this committee, is not to listen to a presentation of achievements. We came to hear the reasons so we can find out how to prevent another accident,” Ammar said.

He said the minister himself, as the official in charge, should provide a transparent account of what happened. Lawmakers and the public, he added, needed to know the full truth rather than hear statistics and accounts of achievements.

Ammar insisted that the minister, as the executive authority, owed the public a factual breakdown of the failure rather than macroeconomic statistics. Calling for political accountability, he reminded the room that previous rail disasters had regularly prompted ministerial resignations or removals.

“The issue is not measured by the billions spent on developing the railways. It is measured by protecting the citizens we are responsible for, and about whom we all have questions to answer before Parliament,” he said.

Al-Wazir: No one stays in office forever

Taking the floor to respond to the criticisms, Al-Wazir sought to diffuse the pressure. “We are not here to fight,” he said. “I came to listen to your comments, advice and recommendations so I can implement them.”

He said his presentation of state investments in the railway system was not intended to boast about achievements, but to show the progress made while emphasizing the need to identify and address the causes of errors that lead to accidents.

Responding to calls for his resignation, the minister said: “They say I won’t leave the ministry. No, we will all leave, and no one will remain in office forever.”

"I will continue to work even if I leave the ministry," he added. "I will work until the day I die, and if I am called upon to do anything after that, I will not hesitate. I will never abandon my country."

A public position, Al-Wazir reiterated, is merely temporary, and service to the state is not bound to a ministerial portfolio.

Technical recommendations without political accountability

At the conclusion of the five-hour hearing, Committee Chair Waheed Qarqar read out a roster of official recommendations. Confined entirely to operational and technical procedures, the final statement contained no political reprimand, no finding of ministerial fault, and no reference to the resignation demands voiced in the room.

The recommendations called for a review of signaling and automatic control systems, train operating regulations and compliance with safe distances between trains. They also called for tighter oversight of signaling towers and stations, reassessment of employee competence, and inspections of trains and railway infrastructure.

The committee further recommended a comprehensive review of locomotives, braking systems, journey data recorders and black boxes, as well as an assessment of communication systems linking train drivers with control rooms and stations.

It called for more frequent inspections and routine maintenance of trains, track switches, signaling equipment and infrastructure, alongside clear timelines for addressing faults and shortcomings identified during the review.

The committee also recommended assessing the returns on railway development projects and linking investment to measurable reductions in accidents. It called for a detailed record of railway accidents over the past five years to identify recurring danger spots.

Regarding the response to the latest crash, the committee said the incident had demonstrated improvements in coordination and performance among state agencies and institutions. It called for building on these efforts and strengthening coordination mechanisms.

It also called for officials to be held accountable for institutional and administrative shortcomings, rather than limiting accountability to the individual directly responsible for an error.

Public session to scrutinize the minister’s loans

Beyond the committee chamber, the controversy over the minister's balance sheets spilled into the evening news cycle. In an interview with television host Sherif Amer on Tuesday night, MP Hussein Haridy challenged the figures presented by Al-Wazir regarding railway debt and treasury liabilities.

"For instance, the Ministry of Finance calculates the Transport Ministry’s liabilities at approximately 13% of the country’s total external debt," Haridy observed, "whereas the minister told us today that the share was only 6%."

Haridy noted that during his own floor intervention, he had formally invited Al-Wazir to attend a public session alongside the Minister of Finance to reconcile the discrepancy on the record.

“The minister implicitly agreed, and we will review the latest developments in the Al-Ayyat accident and discuss the official measures taken,” Haridy said.