“There are systems which help us to provide services and to serve the airspace without problems”, said, among other things, the Minister of Transport.
Interference with the GPS system is an external phenomenon, we cannot change it, “but the necessary measures have been taken in all critical services, but unfortunately we cannot influence”, said the Minister of Transport, Alexis Vafeadis.
Asked to comment on the problems that have been identified in the said system for some time and if some measures can be taken, Mr. Vafeadis stated that “we cannot change this situation”, noting that the whole region has been affected. Answering questions about what other countries are doing, the Minister said that he has not been in contact with the surrounding states that have been affected.
We have assessed what is happening, he said, it is an interference that affects some systems. “Where we had some critical infrastructure, we have managed the issue. Unfortunately, we cannot change the others, i.e. the GPS in phones, cars, we cannot differentiate these”.
Asked to say if by critical infrastructure he means airspace, he answered in the affirmative. “There's no point in that. There are systems which help us to provide services and to serve the airspace without problems”. Air traffic controllers can and do manage the issue, airline pilots know how to manage it, he added. “So it's not something pleasant, but it's manageable.”
Measures to upgrade road safety
In response to a journalist's remark that fatal traffic accidents have increased this year compared to the corresponding period last year, and if he is worried about what measures will be taken, the Minister of Transport said that these “are not pleasant figures, we want deaths to decrease and we have goals that we have set with the EU and we want to achieve them”.
There are, he said, two competent authorities for this issue, the Ministry of Transport which manages road safety issues and the Police which manages daily traffic issues on the roads. These two authorities, he added, are managing the issue as best as possible. His Ministry, he said, has more long-term issues to manage, such as the road network and traffic lights, and the Police to deal with daily emergency situations with surveillance and on-site presence.
Mr. Vafeadis referred to a graph on the website of the Ministry of Transport which shows a decrease in the number of fatalities in the last 20 years and this is the result – he said – of the strict surveillance of the roads by the Police, but also of the measures for a safe road network, such as and the safest cars that are now in circulation.
However, he added, the downward path is not a straight line, some years there is an increase and then we return to the descent. “Unfortunately, we seem to be going through a period where we've had an upturn due to bad times.” His Ministry, he said, is committed to continuing to implement measures that will continue to improve road safety, with the ultimate goal of seeing real reductions in fatal and serious road accidents.
This is a strategy that it starts, he explained, at the level of the European Commission and is implemented by the member states. Abroad, he said, there is an additional measure that has been passed by the Parliament but has not yet been implemented and concerns the further reduction of the speed limit in residential areas. Where our children run on bicycles, the lower the speed, the safer our children are, he noted.
