Pakistan Railways on the wrong track

When is no news, good news? Certainly when all the news emanating from an entity and its operations is depressing like in the case of Pakistan Railways (PR). Since the beginning of this month, PR has featured in a plethora of news articles in national newspapers for all the wrong reasons.
PR administration kicked off June with a public reminder of their disregard for the countrys legal system as they flouted High Court orders for the removal of 10 contractual officers.
Barely a week later; the Supreme Court had to direct the PR police chief to take action against an alleged serial sexual offender who has not been arrested to-date despite complaints from 17 female officers of the same department.
In following days, the Auditor General unearthed misappropriations to the tune of Rs400 million due to illegal issuance of tenders for the sale of scrap and the employees unions staged protests to demand a probe into reasons and persons behind the decline of the railways.
Issues such as delays and cancellations of train routes, disconnection of electricity and water due to non-payment and other operational blunders are apparently so commonplace that they only warranted single-column appearances (and there were many!) in the back pages of most dailies.
The federal railway minister finally found time to address the media regarding the struggling PSE, while attending a religious gathering on June 19th. Talking about the governments plans to set the stagnating enterprise on a path of progress, Ghulam Bilour said that PR will need twice as many new engines than it currently has, for a turnaround.
Without any mention of the myriad financial scandals, widely publicised misappropriations and even serious crimes taking place in Pakistan Railways, the elected representative found it apt to stick to the mantra of "send more money".
This oft repeated demand for funds is bewildering when viewed against the fact that the route-kilometres served by PR has dropped consistently over the years, whereas the entity has not even managed to maintain the tracks it inherited at the time of independence, despite hundreds of billions of rupees being poured into PR.
As majority of the funding received by the institution has gone towards debt servicing, wages and ensuing loopholes, it is little wonder that the track length in the country compared to the total area of the country has lagged compared to other countries.
The only echelon of power superior to the federal ministry; the Prime Minister appears even less pressed to address the plight of the railways. The PM has not even found time to meet the members of the National Assembly standing committee on railways, despite repeated requests; let alone reviewing their recommendations.
While PR continues its head long dive into bankruptcy, the government has shown no signs of releasing Rs11 billion that had been pledged for its development. This has in turn emboldened the relevant ministerial and secretarial representatives to absolve themselves of any responsibility of weeding out corruption and inefficiency from the organisation.
A plan for the eventual privatisation of the railways formulated during Shaukat Tareens stint as finance minister has also been gathering dust for the past year.
The NA standing committees recommendation of releasing funds to PR for purchase and up gradation of equipment has been repeated ad infinitum by all and sundry.
But given the jittery track record of PR administration and the relevant ministry, it is unlikely that the same committees calls for transparency and accountability in such disbursements will be heeded.