Railways to restore branch line trains from today

M RAFIQUD GORAYA

LAHORE: Pakistan Railways (PR) will restore its all suspended branch line trains from today (Tuesday).

An announcement made here on Monday said that in future no branch line train would be terminated due to shortage of diesel.

It further said the government has authorised Pakistan Railways to buy fuel from the open market on cash to make sure that no train is halted due to non-availability of diesel.

It may be added that the Railways had inconceivably terminated its very vital branch line train services across the country on 16th December after depletion of its diesel/fuel reserves. The PR Lahore Division had cancelled all 16 Up and Down branch line trains operations due to fuel shortage. The affected trains were Ghori Express, Badar Express, Bao Train, Lasani Express, Rawalpindi Rail Car and passenger trains for Jaranwala, Sargodha, Kasur and Okara.

It may be further added that Business Recorder had been regularly reporting that the Railways was facing serious liquidity crunch as its fuel payment checks had been dishonoured many times after it had exceed its credit limit of Rs 1 billion with the PSO that virtually halted all train operations.

According to PR officials, Pakistan Railways needs at least 450,000 litres of diesel daily to operate all the scheduled trains across the country. It has the capacity to run over 200 trains daily, but due to financial constraints it was merely operating some 80 trains and incurring financial losses of billions of rupees because of under-utilisation of its vast resources and infrastructure.