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BAHRAIN

Bahn seals massive deal with Qatar and Bahrain

German rail operator Deutsche Bahn said on Sunday it had signed a multi-billion-euro contract to build high-speed railway lines and underground transport networks in Qatar and Bahrain.

Published: 22 November 2009 15:25 CET
Bahn seals massive deal with Qatar and Bahrain
Photo: DPA

The total investment earmarked for the projects amounts to €17 billion, the firm said in a statement.

With its Qatari partners, Deutsche Bahn will design and build a metro system for the capital Doha, comprised of four lines with 98 stations and a total length of 300 kilometres.

In addition, a 180-kilometre-long high-speed line to neighbouring Bahrain is envisaged, with trains capable of travelling 350 kilometres per hour.

Deutsche Bahn boss Rüdiger Grube signed the deal in Doha in the presence of Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, who is also foreign minister, as well as German Transport Minister Peter Ramsauer.

The contract creates a new company called the Qatar Railways Development Company, which will be 49-percent owned by Deutsche Bahn and 51-percent by Qatari Diar, Qatar’s state-owned infrastructure and property development firm.

This development firm will control a planning budget of €700 million.

“We are proud and delighted that the Qatari government has chosen Deutsche Bahn as its partner for this ambitious infrastructure project,” said Grube in a statement.

“Such a project helps us to secure jobs at home at an economically difficult time,” he added.

Ramsauer said the contract demonstrated that German technology, especially in the domain of transportation, was in world-wide demand.

Deutsche Bahn added that it hoped to win more contracts in the Middle East following what it hoped would be a fruitful partnership with Qatar.

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TRAINS

Train staff threaten wildcat strike in Skåne on Monday

Trains could be disrupted across Skåne in southern Sweden on Monday after the SEKO transport union threatened a wildcat strike over an attempt to remove a troublesome union official.

Published: 2 January 2021 08:39 CET
Train staff threaten wildcat strike in Skåne on Monday
Arriva, which operates the Pågatåg train network, faces a strike. Photo: Johan Nilsson/TT
The union has set up a strike committee after Arriva, the Deutsche Bahn subsidiary which runs the Pågatågen regional trains, offered Ola Brunnström, the union's health and safety official, two years of salary if he took voluntary redundancy.  
 
“For us, what was the straw on the camel's back was the attack on the right to self-organisation, that what they are doing is actually breaking the law,” a member of the new committee told the Sydsvenskan newspaper. 
 
“Ola Brunnström is a chief health and safety official and he should be protected under the Trade Union Representatives Act.” 
 
Brunnström has denied the offer, but Arriva wants to push ahead nonetheless and is set to meet him, together with Seko representatives on Monday. 
 
According to Seko, the meeting between Brunnström and Arriva will centre on an  email he wrote to other Seko-affiliated staff on October 9th, when he wrote: “We are not afraid of the bosses, they should be afraid of us.” 
 
 
Jonas Pettersson, Seko's head of planning and communication, told Sydsvenskan that Arriva had been trying to silence a high profile union official with a long hisotry of pushing for better safety for the company's employees. 
 
Arriva would only tell Sydsvenskan that they had had a discussion with one of their employees. 
 
Brunnström has in recent months been a vocal participant in a struggle with the company over equipment to protect staff from being infected with coronavirus, over loo breaks, and also over Arriva's moves to unilaterally reduce employees hours and salary. 
 
Pettersson said Seko would do everything in its power to prevent Brunnström losing his job, but said the union could not support a wildcat strike and encouraged its members not to take part in it. 
 
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