Derailing the distressed

With the bigwigs opting for flights, big wheel bus services or their own posh vehicles as their preferred mode of transport, the attrition of Pakistan Railways mars the lower-middle class only. Once a prominent state institution, Pakistan Railways has degraded to repentant remnants of its promising past, owing to corruption, politics, imprudence and downright negligence. While railways are a prominent source of profit-making in around the globe, the boundless losses in our neck of the woods, is a melancholy sight.
The financial quagmire, that Pakistan Railways finds itself in, has shelved 115 trains from our mundane repertoire of locomotives. This in turn has rendered thousands unemployed, and left the retirees in the wait for their pensions. Some of the retired PR officers have not had their dues cleared for over two months and hence they took it upon themselves to rally for justice in Lahore recently. The institution has no money to pay the employees or purchase fuel. The service cut has in turn ensured that every single engine is weighed down with an augmented number of passengers and hence the pace of the rails would have be slashed; further hampering the passengers excursions and the transport mechanics of goods.
However what was even more inferior in quality, than our rail network, was the retort of Haji Ghulam Ahmad Bilour – Federal Minister, Railways. Despite PR being in utter dire straits, the minister had a jaunty take on the scenario; “So what, countries like Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia have no railways either!” was his assertion – illuminating the locus of the ghastly scenario. It’s up for debate, whether the minister juxtaposing us with the global powerhouse Afghanistan is more startling, or his disregard for the commercially beneficial and militaristically pivotal institution. Even so, the fact that the Saudis do actually have a railway system might take the aforementioned cake.
The federal cabinet recently sanctioned Rs10.1 billion ($120m) two months ago, however a meager fraction of Rs1 billion ($10m) has been released citing concerns over mismanagement of funds and corruption. Ghulam Ahmed Bilour also unraveled the telling tale that PR has been generating haughty numbers as far as annual operating deficit is concerned; numbers as gargantuan as Rs4.7 billion ($54.6 million) for 2007-2008 and the forecasted Rs26.3 billion ($30 million) for 2010-2011 are being touted. Mr Bilour also stressed that another 100 locomotives are needed for the plummeting graph to approach the swelling demands of the situation. However the small matter of actually proposing a strategy for the realisation of this pioneering thought was unfortunately shunned. When all the aforementioned issues are coupled with a dip in revenue and a massive rise in fares and freight rates, logically there can only be one upshot; unrest.
With the unemployment rate rising up to 15 per cent, the fact that PR is the hub of employment for around 80,000 workers connotes that the crisis has wide spreading repercussions. And of course the politicisation of vacancies doesn’t aid the cause at all. A deal with China is said to be on the horizon, which could bolster our squad of locomotives, but unfortunately the fulfillment of the purchases is likely to linger on till next year; hence the immediate solution is still anyone’s guess regrettably.
Privitisation of the Railways might just be the last resort, and since it is one of eight public sector organisations short listed for the privatisation plan, it is a glimmer of hope; however diminutive. Nonetheless in Pakistan ‘short listing’ is more often than not a euphemism for procrastination. All the same, the issue remains as a mammoth dilemma since it directly affects that particular fraction of our social setup which is the target of every shortcoming in our system and has already been fraught with a plethora of other intricacies.

The writer is sub-editor, Profit. He can be reached at [email protected]