NS Recruits Extra Security Guards to Curb Violence in Trains and Stations

NS therefore wants to expand the Safety & Service department from 675 to 740 jobs and hopes to be able to cope with the increased aggression. “We have been startled by incidents several times in recent weeks,” says CEO Wouter Koolmees of NS.

“All colleagues who have been affected by this have our full support. It is completely ridiculous that our employees are threatened and harassed while performing their public duties. Public transport belongs to and is for everyone. And that also means that we must all ensure that our colleagues can safely do their work and that travelers can travel pleasantly. At NS we will continue to do everything we can to ensure this. We also need a government that is in as much of a hurry as we are to tackle this social problem.”

Beaten

The number of incidents in which NS employees were beaten, spat on and threatened rose from 744 to almost 1000 last year, with 220 employees also injured. Although additional measures were already taken in 2022 to limit aggression, these are now being expanded even further.

“Our great wish is that we can check the identity of perpetrators of violence ourselves. The sooner you know who you have in front of you, the less quickly a situation can get out of hand. This also relieves the police, who had to be called up no fewer than 6,750 times in 2022,” says Koolmees.

The agreements to attract even more security guards have been made with the railway unions, which have regularly sounded the alarm in recent weeks and demanded measures to create a safer working environment. “Of course we are pleased that NS is taking responsibility and is going to hire extra security guards. But it is too sad for words that it is necessary to make public transport safer,” said Henri Jansen of FNV Spoor.

‘Confused persons’

“But it is worrying that many people choose public transport – the hot trains and stations – as a place to stay because they have nowhere else to go. I am talking, among other things, about confused persons and some asylum seekers. That is a social problem that the government should also take up”, says the trade unionist.

Over the past weekend it was again quite a hit on the track. For example, a Thalys employee near Rotterdam was severely beaten when he asked a fare dodger to leave the train. When a 28-year-old traveler was arrested in Roosendaal, an officer also received a headbutt. At Schiphol, a group of young people was removed from a train after a report about a (fake) weapon they had with them.