KARACHI:
After every major accident, I send emails to 27 senior most officials of the Ministry of Railways and other concerned officials explaining why the train accidents will keep on happening and the necessary steps needed to prevent them. However, not a single email was ever responded. More people died in the Ghotki train accident on June 7 than all the deaths put together in all the train accidents that occurred in the UK in the last 20 years. Only in the last four months, the Pakistan Railways reported 64 accidents — 9 times more than what Turkey had in past 21 years.
What makes the Pakistan Railways so inefficient and unsafe? The answer is simple. It is still operated with old equipment and dilapidated tracks, while its management system chugs along with 18th century colonial and bureaucratic processes. Other than Afghanistan, the Pakistan Railways is perhaps the only railway in the world that does not even have a rudimentary Occupational Health and Safety Management System — an international requirement, even if you operate a 10-person company. A documented health and safety system is a legal requirement in UK if you employ five or more people. It is a system that sets out an organisation’s approach and commitment together with the arrangements that have been put in place for managing health and safety of the people. It is a unique document that defines who, what, when and how hazards, risks and controls are eliminated or managed in an organisation.
The first thing that our politicians do after an accident is blame each other. The next they do is to blame linemen, signalmen, engine drivers, electricians, tracks, passengers or pressure-cookers. No one is willing to acknowledge that we have an archaic management system that ought to have been crushing stones rather than managing trains. To retain the same “leadership” and to insist on not developing a railway safety system is to guarantee unending accidents and continued loss of life.
Naeem Sadiq
Karachi
Published in The Express Tribune, June 10h, 2021.
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