ATHENS: The Greek prime minister has vowed to upgrade the country’s railways as his embattled government braces for a vote of no confidence after huge protests over a 2023 train crash that killed 57 people.

Two days after hundreds of thousands took to the streets in fury over the response to the disaster on its second anniversary, Kyriakos Mitsotakis acknowledged that not enough had been done to build a “safe and modern” transport system, saying the largest protests in recent history had emphasised the demand for action.

The collision occurred on the Athens-Thessaloniki line when an intercity train crammed with students hit a freight train head-on in the gorge of Tempe.“Our infrastructure must be modernised and made safe, because what has been done in recent years is simply not enough,” Mitsotakis said in a weekly online address, dedicated solely to the disaster which killed 57 mostly young people and left scores of others injured on the night of 28 February 2023.

“The citizens – both those who marched in protest and those who grieved in silence – demanded the obvious: truth and justice for the victims, a state that takes action to ensure such a tragedy is never repeated (and) safe and modern public transport that the country deserves.”