DESPITE tall claims made by Minister for Railways, Sheikh Rashid Ahmad, for improvement in the working of the organization what transpired in the Supreme Court of Pakistan on Friday exposed poor state of affairs prompting the CJP to ask for a detailed report within a month about its operations and employees. Secretary Railways informed the apex court that there are 76,000 employees, 142 passenger trains and 120 freight carriages but only 43 passenger trains were operational these days.
Pakistan Railways has long been focus of the attention of the judiciary as well as media because of sorry state of affairs despite huge potential to run the institution on professional lines and turn it profitable. Like Pakistan Steel Mills, it has been seeking injection of massive funding by the Government to run its day-to-day affairs but what people witnessed during tenure of Khawaja Saad Rafiq made it absolutely clear that improvement was possible even in the face of resource constraints and that Pakistan Railways can deliver as per expectations of the people. Successive governments also tried to rationalize manpower of the organization but ended up in adding more and that too mostly on political considerations without regard to genuine administrative or technical requirements. Its workshops are worth for nothing due to induction of non-qualified people and as a result repair and maintenance has always been a problem. The problem was also highlighted by frequent accidents but no one accepted the responsibility and things stand as before. The CJP has observed that the entire system has gone corrupt and sought report on operations and manpower of Pakistan Railways and hopefully the exercise would lead to some tangible movement towards the cherished objective of running the organization purely on commercial considerations and upgradation of its system and facilities. Luckily, our friendly neighbour China is more than willing to provide financial and technical assistance for the gigantic task of reforming the institutions under the framework of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) but some quarters are hindering the process of modernization and upgradation at the instance of some vested interests. This aspect may also be looked into by all concerned.
