UKRAINE: ‘We do everything to keep the railways moving every day in this difficult situation. For two and a half years of war, we have never stopped operations’, reported Yevhen Liashchenko, CEO of Ukrainian national railway Ukrzaliznytsia when he spoke exclusively to Railway Gazette International at the recent InnoTrans trade fair in Berlin.
‘90% of our trains run on time’, he continued. ‘Thanks to the heroic work of our staff, we repair some of the infrastructure damage caused by bombing in a few hours. Since the beginning of the war, we have renovated almost 1 400 km of railways, rebuilt 48 bridges and more than 40 substations. Especially in the last two to three months, the enemy started to attack our power supply infrastructure, the substations and also our depots’, Liashchenko added.
‘After the attack finishes and the alarm stops, our staff immediately go and repair the infrastructure. Thanks to that, we can repair a bridge or a station in a month.’
Focus on staff support
Liashchenko explained that as the conflict endures, more focus was needed on supporting railway staff through this exceptionally challenging period.
‘We do everything we can to support our staff who are in the military force — some went voluntarily’, he said. ‘We are the largest employer in Ukraine, we have over 185 000 workers. More than 700 of our staff were killed in the war to date, either during work or on the front line. More than 10 500 of our employees are currently in the army. More than 2 000 of our colleagues came back to UZ having been demobilised’, he added.
‘We have social programmes to provide financial support to our employees and the families of those who lost their lives. To try mitigating the loss of our work force, we run programmes to provide social support for our veterans aiming to help them getting back to work. We also provide training for the children of railway workers.
‘I am very proud of our people. Despite of all the danger the majority of our employees keep doing their job heroically. For example, Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast is under daily attack at the moment. And still, our people stay in Pokrovsk and keep repairing the infrastructure, keep managing the railway operations, day after day. I visited Pokrovsk in early September. There was a rocket attack, the alerts were already on, but a member of the train crew — she was a young lady — stayed next to the train and assisted the passengers until the evacuation process was finished’, Liashchenko reported.
- Read the full interview with Yevhen Liashchenko in the November issue of Railway Gazette International.
