BIRN: The canopy fell at a time when the government did not have a railway reconstruction program

The reconstruction of the railway network and the station in Novi Sad, under whose canopy fifteen people died, was carried out without the National Railway Infrastructure Program. writes for BIRN Jelena Zoric.

Namely, the first and last such program expired in 2021, and the Government led by Ana Brnabić and Miloš Vučević since then did not adopt a new document.

With the national program, the Government determines what the priority works are, where and how much they will be paid for, and how they will be carried out.

Adoption of the National Program was prescribed by the Law on Railways in 2013, and four years later this program was adopted for the period from 2017 to 2021.

The government is breaking the law.

The Law on Railways from 2013 provided that the National Program of Public Railway Infrastructure is adopted by the Parliament on the proposal of the Government of Serbia. The government was also supposed to submit to the Assembly once a year reports on the implementation of the program for approval.

With the adoption of a new law in 2018, the role of the assembly in this process was eliminated, and the government did nothing.

By law, and based on the National Program of the Government of Serbia, the company Railway Infrastructure of Serbia should annually prepare programs for the construction, reconstruction and maintenance of the railway infrastructure. Searching the publicly available documentation, those programs are not visible, so the question is not only on what basis, but also whether that company did them on an annual basis.

According to the law, this state-owned company should submit a report on the implementation of the annual program to the competent ministry twice a year, and the ministry should submit a report to the Government of Serbia once a year.

Silence of those in authority

The Government of the Republic of Serbia, the Ministry of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure and the Railway Infrastructure of Serbia did not respond to BIRN's questions until the text was published.

The national program, which expired in 2021, provided for the modernization of the railway from Belgrade to Subotica, as well as the improvement of the efficiency of the main nodes - Belgrade, Niš and Novi Sad.

The reconstruction of the railway station in Novi Sad began in 2021, and the reconstructed station was first opened in 2022 by the President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić and the Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orban, and then again in July 2024 by the provincial Prime Minister Maja Gojković and the Minister of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure Goran Vesic.

A few months later, on November 1, the canopy at the station collapsed a few minutes before noon, killing 14 people on the spot, while one person died later in hospital.

Shortly after the fall of the canopy, the station was closed.