Theft or leakage: 22 tons of coal goes ‘missing’, Railways comes under pressure

Freight train was transporting imported coal to Sahiwal power plant

LAHORE: The management of Pakistan Railways (PR) was dealt a blow on Thursday after an entire hopper wagon of a freight train, which transported imported coal from Port Qasim to a power plant in Sahiwal, was found empty.

It was the second coal consignment for the 1,320-megawatt Sahiwal coal-fired power plant to test the expertise of PR in timely delivering the cargo.

“Each wagon of the freight train was carrying 22 tons of coal, though the actual capacity of each of them was 70 tons,” the PR spokesman told The Express Tribune.

“These operations were carried out on an experimental basis, however, when the power plant starts running at full capacity, the railways will transport coal according to the demand,” he said.

Officials working on the power plant have voiced concern over the missing coal, which was imported from South Africa.



“We are investigating the actual reason; a mess has already been created in the power plant over this negligence, which though is not huge, but can possibly open more avenues of theft and a debate whether the railways is the safest mode of coal transportation,” said an official.

“The price of this imported bituminous coal is almost double than the locally produced coal and the theft cannot be ignored,” he added.

PR recently got its first consignment of seven 4,000 horsepower locomotives from General Electric, a US engineering company.

Each locomotive cost Rs570 million and it is expected that out of the total 55 new locomotives, around 25 will be utilised for transporting coal.

Recently, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif and Railways Minister Khawaja Saad Rafique received the first freight train carrying 12,000 tons of coal for the $1.6 billion Sahiwal power plant.

PR has constituted a committee to investigate the matter of missing coal. The spokesman, however, dismissed the idea of theft, saying there were reports of coal leakage from the wagon during transportation.

“These hoppers (railway wagons) have been designed by China and manufactured in Pakistan; they have both auto and manual features. It is expected that someone intentionally or unintentionally put the wagon on a manual mode from Karachi which caused the leakage,” he said.

The official deputed at the power plant, however, argued that how it was possible that coal was leaking from the wagon and no one tried to stop it.

“It could further strengthen the possibility of theft. If any railway operator put the wagon on the manual mode, then there is a possibility of theft by some lower railway staff; it needs to be checked,” he added.

The PR spokesman insisted that in order to avoid such incidents in the future, the railways had decided to design a locking device for the freight wagons.

“Our ground realities are much different from other countries; the corporation has decided to install a locking device in all hopper wagons to control any such issue in the future,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 3^rd, 2017.

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