Khawaja Saad Rafique challenges railway officials’ stats

Saad Rafique says railways cannot afford to hire 11 thousand new people

ISLAMABAD: Former railway minister Khawaja Saad Rafique has admonished the Pakistan Railways (PR) officials for presenting incorrect figures to the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Railways and asked them to abstain from coming up with incorrect statistics in future.

A meeting of the standing committee, chaired by Moin Watoo, discussed on Monday issues of the railway including punctuality of trains. The PR’s official Waqar Ahmed presented a report that said railways had witnessed an improvement in punctuality.

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“Punctuality was 61% in 2016-17, 71% in 2017-18 and 72% in 2018-19,” he said

The former railway minister, however, challenged the statistics and figures. He said he could prove that the punctuality had not improved. Showing documents of the previous meeting, he said the figures have been changed in the past 2 to 3 days and there was tampering at two places.  “Six out of 10 trains are running on loss but despite these losses, a profit of Rs97 million has been shown,” he said.

He also expressed anger over new appointments in railway. He asked the officials to demonstrate responsibility and guide the new railway minister, Sheikh Rashid.  “Railways cannot afford to offer ten to eleven thousand new jobs,” he said.

Rafique said the governments change but the policies should continue. “If cronies were to be appointed then its burden would be borne by the state,” he said. The committee later summoned all details of the level crossing and In-land crossing in the next meeting