For the Love of Pakistani Railways

For the Love of Pakistani Railway

Rail has always been one of the safest and cheapest forms of transport for the masses, but the sector has been badly ignored in Pakistan due to a crisis of governance. Pakistan Railways is the most visible symptom of our ailing
state infrastructure. The cheapest mode of transport has been criminally neglected for decades, rendered an orphan across the years. With rapid increase in losses and suspension of several trains over the last few years, the graph of Pakistan Railways is only
going down and its future looks uncertain.

The comedy arises from the fact that we have 520 locomotives which is more than we need; the misfortune from the reality that only 87 of them are today operational. In that sense there are parallels with the power-sector crisis.

Our installed generating capacity exceeds demand and we should be a net exporter of electricity; instead we print money to service the circular debt and as much of 50 percent of our generating capacity lies idle. Our 87 operational
motive power units are significantly hampered in their operational capacity because Pakistan Railways (PR) does not have enough money to buy the fuel that would get them going again.

However, the moguls of PR have decided that what is really needed are 150 new engines at the trivial outlay of $600. It will be remembered that we bought 75 duff locos from the Chinese. Unfortunately not one of them is now working.
These memorials to poor quality control cost us $1.5 million apiece, and the deal had nothing whatsoever to do with a visit our president made to China during which he waxed lyrical about the qualities of Chinese railway engineering and manufacture.

The 150 new puffers are American in origin, and cost an eye-watering four million dollars apiece assembled or $1.5 million in kit form and including spares. Let’s put it another way that is $600 million dollars that we have not
got and are unlikely ever to have – time for the treasury printers to work overtime.

Ironically again, we have the capacity to repair many of the locos currently in a state of disrepair, and we have a similar capacity to assemble engines supplied disassembled which would bring long-term jobs to thousands. Either
we let the executioner go about his business or grant a reprieve – but if the latter, then make a genuine commitment to rehabilitation of the railways rather than the sticking-plaster solutions that come apart so quickly.

Views expressed here are the writer’s own and in no way represent newspakistan.pk’s official editorial policy!

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Posted by Momina Khan on Nov 17 2011. Filed under Opinion, Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry