ATHENS - Rail services in Greece ground to a halt and ships were held up in ports near the capital Athens on Feb 28, as rail workers walked off the job to mark the anniversary of the country's deadliest train crash - and demand justice and bigger pay rises.

A passenger train from Athens to the northern city of Thessaloniki collided head-on with a freight train on Feb 28 2023.

The incident killed 57 people and stirred mass protests over what many viewed as the result of decades of neglect of the rail sector.

On Feb 28, churches across the country rang their bells 57 times to represent the number of those killed, many of them young students returning home after a long weekend.

Protesters, ranging from rail and hospital workers to seafarers and school teachers, joined the 24-hour strike by Greece's largest public sector union ADEDY, which represents about half a million workers.

Many of them, including students, started rallying at meetings points in central Athens as they geared for a march to Parliament.

Some held up a black banner reading: “We don’t forget, we demand justice.”

A station master was arrested hours after the crash and a Greek judge is investigating the case. A trial is likely to begin in June, the government has said.

But many survivors and victims' relatives say that politicians, who are protected under Greek law from prosecution, should also assume responsibility for safety system deficiencies.

Grieving families and survivors will hold a memorial service at the site of the crash in the Tempi valley in central Greece later in the day.

Workers are also critical of what they say are insufficient pay rises, the first after 14 years in the public sector. They say the increases were not enough to offset the impact of rising living costs.

Workers want a 10 per cent across-the-board rise instead and more hirings.

Greece has been recovering from a decade-long debt crisis and three international bailouts which it got in turn for cutting wages and scrapping holiday bonuses in the public sector.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis' conservative government has increased the minimum monthly salary by 20 per cent to 780 euros (about S$1,140) since it took office in 2019 and vowed to raise it further to reach 950 euros by 2027.

However, monthly salaries in Greece still lag behind a European Union's average. REUTERS