There’s no plan to privatise railways, says PR spokesman

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Railways (PR) on Monday while rejecting rumours regarding the privatisation of PR has said that there is no plan to privatise the national entity as it is all set to generate Rs 85 billion, the highest revenue target during the ongoing financial year.

A PR spokesman while denouncing a statement associated with the chief executive officer (CEO) has said that so far, during this year, the PR has generated over Rs 70 billion till the month of May 2023-2024, despite facing serious infrastructural damage and financial crisis owing to devastating floods of 2022 monsoon.

The spokesman said that the PR is expecting to generate revenues up to Rs 85 billion by the end of this financial year through the consistent efforts and hard work of the Railway workers.

He said that during the current fiscal year the PR’s revenue generation has witnessed an increase of 75 percent so far which is a historic high, adding that in 2022-2023, Pakistan Railways total earnings was around Rs 40 billion.

He said that out of Rs 70 billion, the revenue was derived from passenger and freight trains while other sectors of the department also contributed to the total revenue.

At present, he said that Pakistan Railways is operating around 96 passenger trains, more than the previous year when 86 trains were running. Similarly, during the previous year, on average it operated 3.75 freight trains while the number reached seven freight trains this year.

The official said the department emphasized that the issue of delay in payment of salaries to employees has now been resolved and things will be more streamlined, once work on the Mainline-I (ML-I) project kicks off.

He said that Pakistan Railways has beefed up precautionary measures to reduce passenger train accidents and only six minor accidents with no causality took place on the entire railway network in the country during the last three months.

The drastic decrease in accidents has been witnessed due to the efforts being undertaken to reduce trespassing at unmanned level crossings and unauthorised locations, the spokesman added.

“Our staff is continuously monitoring the railway tracks across the country and conducting thorough inspection of the trains as the safety of the passengers is the top priority of the department,” he said.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024