Picture of deception and abandonment

Only few people know that one train was inaugurated thrice under three different names by Sheikh Rashid.

KARACHI: In 2007, when former minister for railways Sheikh Rashid Ahmed apparently inaugurated three trains, Jinnah, Nishtar and Sir Syed, to run between Karachi and Rawalpindi, few knew that one train had been inaugurated thrice under three different names. Today, not a single bureaucrat in the Pakistan Railways refutes this.

The railways, on which 82.5 million people travel annually and seven million tons of goods are transported, has continued to suffer losses, monetarily as well as infrastructure wise, through different governments.

With little or no investment in the physical infrastructure and maintenance, over five dozen passenger trains are standing still. And recently, Federal Minister for Railways Ghulam Ahmed Bilour, who had served as railways minister under Nawaz Sharif’s second government as well, decided to halt the service of 16 trains. The move received criticism from various quarters, particularly passengers in remote parts of the country who lack reliable and affordable transport options.

However, Divisional Commercial Officer (DCO) at the Karachi City Station Kamran Saeed defends the move, pointing out that it was necessary to cut costs. “Pakistan Railways is incurring an annual loss of Rs15 billion and our deficit has swelled to Rs52 billion. Instead of running two trains with fewer passengers, we wanted to shift the load to one train and ensure that it was used to its full capacity.”

Corruption

Many blame inept ministers and their corruption for the present dismal state of railways. The corruption includes commercialisation by railway officials of lucrative railway land around the seven operating territorial divisions, Peshawar, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Multan, Karachi, Sukkur and Quetta.

“Corruption is not unique in the railways,” comments Senator and former minister for railways, Lt Gen (retired) Javed Ashraf Qazi. “But at some point you need to say enough is enough – no one has ever done that.”

In his opinion, suspending the operation of passenger trains is not a solution. “You need to put an end to the various forms of corruption that have plagued the railways.”

Qazi is one of the few ministers who are credited with having introduced policies that benefited the sector during his brief stint between 1999 and 2002. During his tenure a restructuring plan actually made the railways a profitable institution and it was able to return the State Bank’s overdraft of Rs5.5 billion.

However, the ministers who later took charge gradually became dependent on the State Bank again. “When I took charge of the department, it was a mess and incurring an annual loss of Rs5.4 billion. The trains were not punctual and there were four station masters at every railway station – none of whom took responsibility.

Since there was no single unit of command, holding these officers accountable was a difficult task,” he recalls. Ten years later, however, any gains that might have been made are lost.

“Three years were too little, but I tried to do what I could and we were able to pull out the railways from crisis,” Qazi claims.

Though privatisation of the sector was being discussed when Qazi took over, the plan was halted and he took measures to rehabilitate the national asset. “One of the first drastic measures I took was to reduce the number of ‘political appointees’. I got rid of at least 40,000 people and reduced the strength from 135,000 people to 95,000 and to everyone’s surprise, the department actually started functioning better.” Similarly, he claims to have gotten rid of 25,000 ‘ghost’ pensioners.

In Saeed’s opinion, one problem is that the government refuses to take charge of pensions. As a result, the department has to allocate 20 per cent for its retired employees’ every year. “The bigger problem is when families claim the employee’s pension even after death. There is no system to check this.”

Lack of vigilance

A senior official at the Karachi Cantt Station, who requested anonymity, laughs when asked about this. “In the case of pensions, it is hard to check whether or not that public money is actually reaching the retired employee or if he is alive or not, but what about those who steal public property? Why doesn’t anyone ask why those spare parts of trains are being sold in the scrap market? Why are the police ineffective in arresting those who steal water taps, pipes, etc from the train? The higher ups know everything but they take no measures to reform the railway police.”

Qazi had a solution for this too. Through his Vigilance Directorate established in 1999, they managed to report 3,800 cases of crime from across different railway stations of Pakistan and were able to save up to Rs856 million.

Furthermore, the department recovered Rs175 million by preventing the sale of scrap and diesel.

Chinese locomotives

While most people acknowledged the efforts of this minister as services improved, he also faced major criticism from the opposition for his investment in Chinese locomotives.

About 65 locomotives were imported from China with an 8-year warranty because they were cost-effective. However, 30 of them stand still on the tracks for want of spare parts.

“Engines of these Chinese locomotives have not been designed for the environment of Pakistan. In areas like Sibbi, Balochistan, where temperatures are frequently high, these trains easily heat up and have to be stopped at frequent intervals which causes the trains to be delayed,” explains Kamran Saeed.

But Qazi rubbishes these claims, saying that the blue and white trains are still popular among people. In Saeed’s opinion, importing locomotives from the US or Japan can only solve the problem.

However, experts differ. “The problem is our railway tracks are not of the standard size since they were laid by the British back in 1861 [with a distance of 5.56 feet between both tracks] and have not been replaced since then,” station manager at Karachi Cantt Station, Bashir Abbasi, told The Express Tribune. “It is only the Chinese trains that we can easily run without having to spend any money on modifying them according to our needs.”

Qazi, who agrees with this, added that China was the only country willing to sell their locomotives to Pakistan as well as offer the department a loan. “The government had refused to invest any money in importing trains so we had to look for countries who agreed to abide by our conditions – and China was the only one.”

Not enough compensation

However, the railway staff argues that many of these trains were destroyed following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in 2007 and the department has still not recovered from the loss. “We only got Rs12.6 million in compensation for 25 to 30 engines that were set ablaze. We suffered a total loss of Rs25 crores,” says Saeed.

Going back on track

None of these compensations will help the Pakistan Railways recover, believes Kaiser Bengali, adviser to CM Sindh on Planning and Development. “Drastic steps need to be taken to make the railway a profitable institution such as shutting down the National Logistics Cell (NLC) and reviving and utilising the freight train service to its maximum capacity and ability.”

Due to the inefficiency and delay of freight trains, approximately 95 per cent of goods are transported by the NLC trucks. If the NLC was closed, it would considerably reduce Pakistan’s oil import bill which had increased by 55 per cent in case of the diesel.

“The railways can never make a profit with passenger trains. It’s only the goods traffic that will help it recover the loss,” says Bengali.
“The NLC should go so we are able to put passenger trains back on track and the poor man is able to travel through this cheap mode of transport.”

Qazi also suggests that Pakistan Railways should be converted into a corporation, while the railway network should remain under public ownership to prevent it from becoming ‘a state within a state’.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 13^th, 2010.