A rare red weather warning is in place for parts of Scotland, with significant flooding expected throughout the country.
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Today, an organiser from the RMT union makes the case that recent flooding on the railways highlights potential negligence and ineptitude from senior Network Rail management.
Gordon Martin, RMT Scotland Organiser writes:
"With weather warnings being issued today for much of Scotland from Thursday onwards, and following on from the scenes shared on social media across Scotland on October 7 and 8 which showed widespread flooding on our railway network, I write to you to highlight the ineptitude and potential negligence of senior Network Rail management in Scotland.
Following the tragic derailment at Carmont near Stonehaven in August 2020, in which three people lost their lives and others suffered life-changing injuries, Network Rail in Scotland gave a commitment to myself amongst others that they would be putting in additional resources to deal with drainage issues across the network. This development was widely welcomed, as the cause of the Carmont disaster was a weather-related infrastructure failure. I have also written to Network Rail on several occasions highlighting my union’s concerns about flooding and landslips on the railway infrastructure in recent times.
During ongoing consultation meetings with RMT representatives at Network Rail over the company’s “Modernising Maintenance” project it has become clear the company no longer intends to put these additional resources into frontline delivery for passengers.
Their modernising maintenance project is in fact nothing about modernising anything and is simply a cost-cutting exercise with scores of frontline skilled maintenance workers already leaving the business earlier this month through redundancy.
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Prior to these skilled workers exiting the industry, Network Rail were already over reliant on agency and contracting staff to maintain the railway to the standards required and there is no doubt infrastructure failures due to weather or any other reason will increase causing delays and inconvenience for passengers.
The wrong-headed decision to renege on the commitment to introduce specialist drainage teams, in conjunction with cuts to already depleted maintenance squads, will in my view increase the likelihood of more disasters like Carmont and these overpaid directors and senior managers could have blood on their hands.
The Scottish Government regularly state they have brought ScotRail into public ownership under the control of ministers and this is a welcome step. However, Network Rail remains under the control of the dead hand of the Tories at Westminster with the senior executives at the company in Scotland content to remain quiet, while trousering hundreds of thousands of pounds to mismanage the railway. Earlier this week I wrote to the director of rail at Transport Scotland expressing my concerns about the drainage teams no longer being put in place and copied in the regulator, the Office of Rail and Road as well as the two most senior people at Network Rail in Scotland.
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So far the silence from all of them is deafening, which in itself is extremely worrying when the potential for derailments and other safety-related incidents which can be catastrophic for workers and passengers alike is increased. I remain hopeful that common sense will prevail and Network Rail will do the right thing and put the safety of the railway workforce and all users of the network in Scotland before their never-ending agenda of cuts to frontline staff and services to meekly comply with their political paymasters in London."
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