Railway guards want metric system

Railway guards seek to have travel allowances calculated in kilometres instead of the outdated miles.

KARACHI: Fifty guards with Pakistan Railways have gone to court so that their travel allowances are calculated in kilometres instead of the outdated miles.

A division bench of the Sindh High Court heard on Monday the constitutional petition filed by the guards who look after trains between Karachi and Rohri. Their lawyer Syed Shoa-un-Nabi argued that they want to correct a fault in the administrative policy, which has no financial implications.

According to the guards, their travel allowance was being calculated in ‘miles’ under the British system. However, Pakistan converted to the metric system under the Act V of 1967, which makes it mandatory that the guards’ allowances be determined according to the metric system (kilometres and metres). They said they had gone to all relevant railway officials and departments but no one was willing to make the correction, which incidentally would have no financial impact. The bench, comprising Justice Shahid Anwar Bajwa and Justice Tufail H Ebrahim, heard the preliminary arguments by their lawyer and ordered for pre-admission notices to be issued to the federal labour ministry, the chairman of the Pakistan Railways and other respondents for a date to be fixed later by the office of the court.

Published in The Express  Tribune, November  2nd, 2010.