Pakistan Railways’ divisional superintendent in the soup

Management may take action against him over stopping train services.

LAHORE: The management of Pakistan Railways is likely to initiate disciplinary action against its divisional superintendent (DS) for Lahore over negligence and stopping services of 16 trains because of shortage of diesel, The Express Tribune has learnt.

“DS Lahore Farrukh Taimoor Gulzai announced on Wednesday the suspension of operation of 16 trains due to shortage of diesel until Friday, but it brought the PR into disrepute,” said a senior PR official, who requested anonymity.

He said the PR management had asked all divisional superintendents to purchase required quantity of diesel to continue all train services that came under their administrative control, but the DS Lahore failed to do so.

The DS Lahore cancelled 16 trains that were to run on January 23, 24 and 25. Even Karachi Express service was cancelled on January 23.

An annoyed General Manager of PR, Junaid Qureshi, who was in Islamabad when the train operations were suspended, rushed to Lahore and issued orders for restarting all trains. He also asked all five divisional superintendents to purchase diesel from the open market.

Qureshi called a meeting of the top hierarchy to discuss the matter, which had once again hurt the reputation of the struggling train operator. They deliberated on the possibility of taking departmental action following an inquiry into the conduct of some officers to avoid such things in the future, the official said.

It was believed that the Lahore Division had a diesel stock of one day, but despite that the train operations were stopped.

To smoothly run its services, the PR has been purchasing 263,000 litres of diesel every day from PSO to meet the needs of all divisions. However, PSO stopped the supply of diesel as its outstanding bills accumulated to Rs1 billion.

Talking to The Express Tribune, PR spokesperson Zubair Shafi Ghuri confirmed that all divisional superintendents had been asked to purchase diesel from the open market to meet their requirements. Following this, the PR restarted the cancelled trains.

“PSO has also been given a cheque of Rs65 million and it has resumed diesel supply,” he revealed.

About disciplinary action, he expressed ignorance, saying it was not in his knowledge, but admitted that the GM was very much annoyed over the cancellation of train services.

Gulzai was contacted for comments, but he was not available to respond to the queries.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 25^th, 2013.

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