There are two versions of PR. I agree with the following version. NS should negotiate India on that if he really wants to bring the glory of Railway back in the eighties and before. Sometimes ago, this minister promised that if Railways did not improve during his tenure he would resign. Lets see how he fulfill his promise. Minister has to prove improvement through passengers experiences traveling on the railway.
Privatization is not helping Railways much. Read the last para of the news.
TIME was, until the 1980s, when one could board the Khyber Mail in, say, Lahore at 9am on any given day of the week. The following morning sometime before 6am, one would be roused as it swept past the somnolent platforms of Jungshahi. One took advantage of the toilet attached to each cubicle of the air-conditioned sleeping car and emerged 40 minutes later relieved, shaved and showered.
Yes, showered. Those were still the glory days of the Pakistan Railways (PR) and the toilets in all air-conditioned sleeping cars had showers. Then the liveried bearer would stick his head in with his pile of trays with steaming goodies for breakfast. Indeed, breakfast was not all this man served; he would appear, as if by magic, at all mealtimes. The food was no match for the chicken curry, brown rice and egg ‘puteen’ served by railway rest house cooks, but it was passable.
**The showers were the first to disappear after the slow decline of this once magnificent institution began at the highest level of the dictatorship of the 1980s. Their removal was a sign of things to come.
**
If trains as splendid and timeless as the Khyber Mail and Tezgam were being driven to perdition, the much younger Shalimar Express plying between Lahore and Karachi did reasonably well. The seats were comfortable and one could recline; the air conditioning chilled to the bone and one frequently had to ask the attendant to turn it down.
The train left either station at 7am and terminated at 9pm. Meals were trundled in on trolleys and one had a range to select from. It was a fun train to ride because regular educated middle-class folks preferred its air-conditioned parlour car and it was rarely late.
By the middle of the last decade, PR had been reduced to a mere shadow of its past glory. Branch lines were shut down and trains that continued to run were never on time. Delays of up to four hours on short hauls like Lahore-Rawalpindi were not unknown while Lahore-Karachi trains could be as many as 20 hours behind. Things were so bad that it was simply not possible to plan anything in advance if one were taking the train.
After two successive bitter experiences of attempting train journeys in 2005, I resolved never to go anywhere near a train again. It was heart-breaking for a train buff like me, but I kept the promise for nearly nine years.
Recently, I was at a loose end in Sukkur when the early morning flight to Karachi was cancelled due to fog. I tried the intercity bus station and discovered that the entire N-5 was blocked by protesters and that no road traffic had been permitted for three days.
I betook myself to Rohri Junction, once busy with dozens of trains passing through it daily. However, uncertain of the condition of trains I called my friend Waseem Agha of the PR for advice. He kindly ironed out everything and I arrived to find a parlour car ticket and lunch waiting for me.
The train arrived 30 minutes behind time. The seats in the car were in full recline because they were broken. There were two large-screen TV sets at either end of the car playing Indian movies at full volume. The minder of this entertainment was an unwashed lout who sneered at me when I asked him to turn the volume down a bit.
Dinner was served by a filthy bearer — forget the liveried man — and there were no fold-out meal tables for your tray: you placed it on your footrest to eat doubled over. In a word, service was lousy.
**In the old days a train running late ‘made up’. But we ended up getting another hour late. Word was that the locomotive did not have optimum pulling because of some fault or the other. Or, said someone else, the lines being from the Raj, trains could not risk travelling faster than 80km per hour. Arriving at 1.30am in Karachi, I resolved anew that I would never again travel by train.
**
**Shalimar Express has, incidentally, been privatised. If this is what privatisation is giving us, may the Lord in heaven deliver us.
**
MAINTAIN MANTRA FOR RAILWAYS - DAWN.COM
Minister Khwaja Saad Rafique sees signs of improvement in the Pakistan Railways (PR) under him.
The PR is generating more money and both passenger-train punctuality and goods-train frequency are increasing. Under a revival plan, the PR is in dialogue with China to upgrade its main line which connects Karachi through Rohri, Khanewal, Lahore, Lalamusa to Rawalpindi. China is also helping set up a dry port in Havelian for holding containers and about two million tonne goods per year could be handled from Khunjerab to Havelian as a pilot project. A new track is being planned to connect Gwadar and Karachi as well as a track from Gwadar to Dera Ghazi Khan through Khuzdar, Baseema and Jacobabad.
Under Khwaja Saad Rafique, the PR has earned more than the revenue targets set by the government for the first two quarters of the ongoing fiscal. However, its deficit has soared to Rs12.421 billion – the organisation earned Rs11.385bn while its expenditure remained Rs23.807bn from July 1 to Dec 31, 2013, according to a statement sent to the ministry of railways.
A senior official of the railways’ commercial wing who would rather stay unnamed says ‘fare rationalisation’ and improvement in punctuality has increased earnings. “But yes there has also been an increase in expenditure. The operational cost constitutes the main component of expenditure and price of high speed diesel has gone up sharply.”
Set up by the same British rulers, the PR is quite often compared to its Indian counterpart, which was turned around and developed into a world model in the space of seven years. “It was Sutesh Kumar who formed guidelines for the revival of Indian railways as the minister in charge,” a PR official recalls. “His successor Lalu Prasad Yadav continued with the implementation of the same policies and converted Indian railways into the world’s only profitable rail organisation.”
By contrast, the PR has been run on an ad hoc basis for long. In the year 2000, then minister Javed Ashraf Qazi constituted an executive committee to supervise the PR in the name of reorganisation. The committee, which has questionable legal basis and which was founded after advice from a consultant appointed by the World Bank, still runs the department. Many argue the old railways board which had worked successfully for many decades until then should have been continued with. The commercial wing official says the board should be restored immediately.
Ishaq Khan Khakwani, a former railways minister, told Dawn that under the current executive-committee arrangement, decisions are recorded without stating the individual opinions of the members. “It is the prerogative of an individual official to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ which is being denied here,” Mr Khakwani says. “The entire committee is held accountable for a wrong decision. This is the biggest lacuna in the system and the weight is tilted in favour of the chairman.”
Engineer Mohammad Iqbal Khatri, a retired additional general manager of railways and a member of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport Pakistan, says the PR’s planning had not been in line with the international policy on account of ever-increasing cost of operation and maintenance.
“Internationally today, both moveable and immovable assets are kept to the bare minimum requirements,” Mr Khatri says. “Condemned or inactive assets are disposed of while operation and maintenance of assets are outsourced to save expenditure on overhead charges. For whatever reasons, the PR has not been able to maintain its assets. It should give priority to the existing assets and to making them effective and efficient to meet the operational requirement.”
Mr Khatri warns against addition in assets without maintenance. “These assets will also face the same fate of lack of maintenance and will ultimately be a burden on the national exchequer. If not governed by international policy of assets management all upcoming projects will have the same fate as has been of the existing infrastructure.”
There are many in the PR who agree with this advice. They say the government must give the PR funds for maintenance and repair of the existing assets and expansion of infrastructure or addition to the assets must be put on hold for now.