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You are here: Home News Dutch News Dutch news in brief, Wednesday 1 July 2009

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01/07/2009Dutch news in brief, Wednesday 1 July 2009

Read the roundup of today's Dutch press from Radio Netherlands.

Train disaster could happen in the Netherlands
AD warns that a train inferno like the one in Italy on Tuesday, in which at least 14 people died and 1000 had to be evacuated, could just as easily happen in the Netherlands. The paper singles out the town of Venlo, in the southern province of Limburg, as a likely disaster site because the shunting yard there is right in the middle of a residential area. Professor of safety and disaster prevention Ben Ale puts “the chance of a similar disaster happening in the Netherlands at one in 200,000.”
 
And only last week, the Inspectorate of Public Works published a damning report on the laxity with which the rail company Keyrail in the town of Zwijndrecht treats wagons containing hazardous substances. The inspectorate found that a third of the wagons were either wrongly labelled or put together incorrectly. A criminal investigation is underway.
 
If that weren’t bad enough, according to Trouw, the Dutch medical emergency services are not properly prepared for a disaster. None of the country's 25 ‘security regions’ is able to cope independently with a disaster. For instance, the number of ambulances and hospital beds available is based on normal requirements.
 
Health Minister Ab Klink and Interior Minister Guusje ter Horst want to improve the situation so that, should disaster strike, there will be enough ambulances to take care of all seriously injured victims within an hour, thus improving survival rates. At the moment only six regions can do this. In practice, neighbouring regions spontaneously help out, as recently seen with the Turkish Airlines crash at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. However, communications between the different regions is less than optimal, which is less than reassuring.

 
Companies ask staff to take pay cuts
What would you choose: a pay rise with the possibility of hundreds of jobs being lost, or no pay rise in exchange for fewer job losses? That is the altruistic versus selfish question asked on the front page of nrc.next. As the recession continues, companies are becoming more creative with ways to survive the crisis. KLM pilots, for instance, have been asked to help out with baggage handling, while others are acting as hosts in airport lounges. The managing director of British Airways has asked his staff to work for nothing for a month, leading the way himself.  Seven thousand BA employees have already volunteered to work without pay.
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