Railway Employees Have Started to Clean Up!
What About the Other Romanians?

It is true that Romania is a country of the contrasts!
Railway employees have gathered to pick up the trash located along the railways. Yet, surprisingly, they did not produce this trash, that is not the result of their activity!
This way the railway employees taught a lesson to the Romanian citizens, "have pointed to" the ones that are throwing things from the train, from the window, to the ones that are coming by cars, by trucks, with bags and throw all kinds of wastes along the railway line.
In their unconsciousness a great part of the citizens of this country situated on the cradle-continent of the world civilization have lost, unfortunately, the most elementary habits that were once the subject of pride for our people: cleanliness, common sense!

The recent action of the railway employees stands a treat to their guild. The days of 21st and 22nd of May, although have been quite unpleasant for many of the railway employees because of the weather that did not protect them at all, the temperature from those days climbing the normal averages for an end of May, have been the days selected for the unfolding of the action named: "O cleaner railways! Be civilized, you will gain a lot!
Equipped with bags, shovels and, here and there, with gloves, people have started from the first hours of the morning to the points previously established for each working group. Although this mobilization slightly seemed as the formerly "patriotic work", still the railway employees did not refuse to be part of it, understanding the role of example of their action for the citizens; and only after the two days spent there and finding out the quantity of wastes collected they became aware of the practical utility of their effort.
The balance of the cleaning action achieved by the National Railway Company "CFR"SA has summed up 11,500 tones of wastes collected from the areas of the railways and the railway stations. In order to achieve this objective, there have been reunited the efforts of almost 50,000 railway employees, from all eight rail regions, as well as their business partners, which have used almost 400 machines, the most important role having the trucks, which have transported the immense piles of trash.
In the two days declared as being the "cleaning days", the initiator of this action, the minister of Transports, Mr. Miron Mitrea, has closely watched the activity of the railway employees in various points along the railways. The minister has declared, on this occasion, that he intends to promote a government decision through which the railways to be considered forbidden areas, the measure aiming at decreasing the number of stealing, and also of the number of railway accidents.
And, in order to make this measure more efficient, the minister has also added that in the near future will be started off the assembling of sound protection walls, which role is to protect from the noise the houses located near the iron way can be extended in the way of protecting it from the intruders of the railway perimeter.
On his turn, Mr. Mihai Necolaiciuc, the general director of CFR SA has specified that the assembling of sound protection walls represents an obstacle for those that decide to give up their lives by throwing themselves in front of a train, and, in the same time, the type of panels used in this respect should be carefully chosen in order to avoid to "tempt" those that are stealing and then selling the material "collected" from the Railways.
The cleanliness has been unfolded quite carefully entering and exiting points from the towns, which, although represent the first image that a passenger has about the area he is transiting by train, have, most of the times, an extremely unpleasant aspect, through the vicinity to the trash pits of the towns, as well as through their transformation in real deposits of abandoned cars and wastes of small or large dimensions.
In order to find out the opinion of the passengers on the railways about the civic attitude that the railway employees have proved and about what should be done the society and the authorities in order to stop the phenomenon of abandoning the wastes in inappropriate places, we went to Nord Railway Station and we took a few declarations. And these were the opinions of our interviewed persons:
"People who throw the trash on the railways are first of all uncivilized, they lack the common sense. When I travel by train I throw ugly faces to the ones that throw the garbage on the windows, because in every compartment there is a box specially arranged for that. What the railway employees did is a normal action, because there is quite clear that the passengers cannot be civilized otherwise. Maybe this way they will also take the example the ones that have different habits, if we can call them that", the opinion of a retired person.
"I believe that such an action is useful and, although I did not take part on May at the "Cleaning days - because I was just out of my shift, - I understood that this kind of action will be also repeated in autumn and I believe that is even better to happen more often. And I am willing to make my contribution, any time it is necessary, to the cleaning of the railways. I wok here, in the Nord Railway Station, and when I see them throwing the trash I reprove them, but I think they have to be called to account in a way or other - with fines would be even better" - a wagon shunting man has declared.
"This kind of actions does not bring anything good, because a bunch of people can not collect the trash that a greater number of citizens of this country make! It is a problem of education here and should be approached differently, there should be made spots on TV, because everyone is watching TV, where people are explained about not throwing the trash on the streets and why should not do that. It seems that it is our problem and by going out and perform "patriotic work" we do not solve it " - a technical designer was telling us.
"People should stop making trash and therefore the railway employees will not have to go out to collect their trash. Not to throw the trash on the streets is something you learn in the first seven years spent at home and for the ones that have not found out that yet the solutions is only one: lashing fines! Most of people fear that. And the civic attitude does not always fit. Because, if you see someone in the train throwing a bottle on the window, you can not say anything because you do not know who you are dealing with"… this was the opinion of a student.
"I do not believe that the duty of a railway employees is to make such actions, this is the obligation of the other citizens to throw the trash where they should! I consider as being motivating for those who have found out about this action, and they should be different, because something like this is inadmissible. We live in a quite civilized country, I can say, so we should avoid having such manifestations; people should be aware of the fact that they should not throw their trash all over the place! But until we will also reach to have the consciousness of those from the Occident there will take… a while. There will take time until we will catch up with them. But not only the simple time passing will solve such things, yet we should self-civilize, educate ourselves. It would be more efficient to correlate the measures that are already taken, here, at the level of CFR, by the management, with…fines, because they are also an educational…mean" - the proposal of an economist.
So, either they come from inside or outside the Railways, people have remained indifferent to this action with civic model valences of the railway employees. Because all of them strongly feel the repercussion of the irresponsible gestures of certain citizens with primitive… habits. Different opinions, different people, a single conclusion: in order to eradicate such gestures they should be harshly sanctioned. Crystal clear: we can not take that any longer!

Silvia Mirea