Railway workers delay trains for 8 hours

Workers, in protest against the non-payment of their salaries, refused to let locomotives out of their shed.

LAHORE: Trains from Lahore were delayed for up to eight hours on Tuesday as Pakistan Railways (PR) workers, in a protest against the non-payment of their salaries, refused to let locomotives out of their shed.

Train services resumed later after the workers were paid and they stopped their protest, but not before thousands of passengers spent hours stranded at Lahore Railway Station. Many had been planning journeys home for the Eid-e-Milad-un-Nabi holiday. The protest lasted around eight hours.

Pakistan Railways, like several other public departments, is under severe financial constraints at present. There were small-scale protests at the beginning of February after pensioners did not get their monthly cheques.

On Tuesday, railway shed workers surrounded the Mughalpura locomotives shed, which housed 32 engines. As a result, the Karakoram Express, Allama Iqbal Express, Tez Gam Express, Rail Car to Rawalpindi, Farid Express, Night Coach to Karachi and others were unable to depart Lahore. Meanwhile, the city railway station filled up with passengers anxiously awaiting news of their trains.

The head of the Railways Workers Union (RWU) told The Express Tribune the protest was related to the upcoming Eid-e-Milad holiday. “We were scheduled to get our salaries today [Tuesday],” said RWU president Sarfaraz Khan. “We are religious people and we need money for the holiday. We cannot celebrate without our salaries.”

Khan said the union was not insensitive to the needs of passengers headed home for the holiday, but that they had little choice. “Our members are poor people. They don’t have money to feed their families. If the distribution of salaries had started on the 12th there would not be this problem. There are some PR officials who are always trying to create disturbances in railway operations.”

A PR spokesman said that the due date for the salaries of these employees was between the 15th and 22nd of every month. “If workers do not get their salaries today [Tuesday] they will get them on Thursday after the holiday,” he said. “It’s routine practice.”

PR officials tried to resolve the protest by offering to pay half the salaries of the shed employees. Workers said they had been offered Rs6 million, but the total salaries came to Rs12 million.

They refused to stop the protest. After further negotiations, PR divisional superintendent Abdul Jabbar had the workers paid their full salaries. The locomotives were allowed out of the shed and the delayed trains set off, but not before the holidays of thousands of passengers had been ruined.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 16^th, 2011.