Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) President Joseph Kabila sacked his transport minister on Friday after an air crash that killed 52 people in the Central African country, which has one of the world’s worst aviation safety records.
Transport Minister Remy Henri Kuseyo Gatanga ”has been sacked for being incapable of organising the aviation sector”, presidential spokesperson Kudura Kasongo said in DRC’s capital, Kinshasa.
The decision was announced as DRC’s Cabinet met to discuss air safety after Thursday’s accident in which a Russian-made cargo plane plunged into a teeming Kinshasa neighbourhood.
At the crash site in the Kingasani neighbourhood, police struggled to keep back onlookers and looters, witnesses said.
They said police made several arrests of young men who tried to scavenge scrap metal, engine parts and valuables from the twisted, blackened wreckage.
DRC’s Cabinet was expected to look at ways of toughening existing air-safety regulations, including improved inspection and harsher penalties for offenders.
The death toll included 20 passengers and three crew who had been aboard the Antonov 26 twin-propeller aircraft when it crashed on to houses in the Kingasani district shortly after taking off from nearby Ndjili International Airport.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said the captain, co-pilot and flight engineer who died were all Russians.
”I was at the market when the crash happened. One of my three children is dead. Two others are missing,” Marie Simbi told Reuters.
‘Killer skies’
At least 30 people had already been killed this year in six plane crashes in the country the size of Western Europe with only a few hundred kilometres of paved roads.
In 1996, at least 350 people died when a Russian-built Antonov-32 cargo plane ploughed through a crowded market in Kinshasa, in the former Belgian colony’s worst air disaster.
Local newspapers expressed outrage at the latest accident, which followed repeated pledges by the Congolese government to crack down against lax air safety by local operators.
”Another flying coffin kills again,” read the headline of Le Potentiel newspaper. ”Congo’s killer skies,” said Le Phare.
Hippolyte Muaka, acting head of DRC’s Civil Aviation Authority, said the crashed plane, which belonged to Congolese airline Africa One but had been rented out to another company, Malila Airlift, had undergone a safety inspection.
He declined to comment on the ongoing investigation.
Ageing planes in DRC suffer from a lack of maintenance and spare parts but they are often the only way to transport people and goods across the country that is slowly recovering from a 1998 to 2003 civil war. The aircraft are often packed with passengers and cargo and accurate records are rare.
DRC’s air safety record was dubbed an ”embarrassment” by the International Air Transport Association last year.
Africa One is on the European Union’s airline blacklist. All airlines certified by DRC authorities — except for Hewa Bora Airways — are banned from the EU. — Reuters