Pakistan Railways (PR) Minister Khawaja Saad Rafique directed the authorities concerned to check the black-marketing of railways’ tickets.
Presiding over a meeting in Lahore, Rafique said that additional police personnel and booking staff would be deployed to facilitate rail commuters.
The meeting also decided to introduce more freight trains.
The meeting was briefed on the launch of a special operation to clear out encroachments from the railways’ property.
Over the years a lack of attention, poor policies, increasing expenditures and poor financial controls and 2010’s floods, left the PR with deficits in billions of rupees.
On July 27 the PR slashed the fares of all passenger trains by over 45 percent, for three months to attract more passengers, with the exception of the Karakoram Express.
The PR also received Rs 1.57 billion to open a Letter of Credit (LC) to import 75 locomotives from China, Rafique added.
Efforts were being made to remove the annual deficit of Rs 35 billion by the end of current financial year, Rafique said.
The minister said there was a dispute of Rs 3 billion between the Punjab government and the railways and thanked provincial government for its cooperation and for the payment of Rs 300 million in first tranche.
Furthermore, he said that the maintenance cost on each locomotive was $50 which was very low as compared to international standards. One freight train earned approximately Rs 1.15 billion annually and was a major source of revenue for the authority, he added.
The management had also decided to run four special trains for Eid to facilitate the passengers to visit their home towns to celebrate the festival with their loved ones, he said. He added that the first train would run from Quetta to Rawalpindi on August 6‚ the 2nd and 3rd on August 7 from Karachi to Lahore, and the 4th from Peshawar to Lahore on August 8.
