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| October 14, 2001 | Sunday | Rajab 26, 1422 |
PR police to get eviction powers
LAHORE, Oct 13: The railway police are being given magisterial powers to remove encroachments from the railway land.
“The law ministry is now drafting a law after a formal approval by the federal government,” railways minister Javed Ashraf Qazi said on Saturday.
Talking to reporters at the city railway station after inaugurating the Lahore Express, the new non-stop train between Lahore and Karachi, he said the anti-encroachment drive would be launched in two phases.
Encroachments on commercial land would be removed first, followed by a campaign against kutcha abadis, he added.
About the winding up of train operations in certain areas of Balochistan after a mob set on fire a railway station, the minister said the train operation would not be restarted there until the provincial government and the area people assured the railway authorities that no such incident would happen in future.
About delay in the running of trains, Qazi said exhausted track and old locomotives as well as manual signalling system were responsible for the delay in most of the cases.
“Wornout tracks are being replaced and new locomotives are being bought from China to improve the situation,” he said, adding the government had promised to make budgetary allocations for making the signalling system automatic.
Answering a question about State Bank loan, Qazi said the railway was being made an autonomous corporation and the process would complete within a year. The SBP would be offered share in the corporation by converting its loan into equity. “We are also planning to dispose of commercial land to pay the SBP loan,” he added.
He said the railway authorities would introduce more express trains as their demand was increasing day by day. However, the step would be taken after acquiring more locomotives and coaches.
He said that after delivering new coaches to Senegal during the current month, the railway carriage factory would start refurbishing express trains, including Chenab Express and Awam Express.
Answering another question, Qazi said the Railway Board chairman would soon leave for China to sign a contract for the supply of 15 locomotives within a year.
He said the federal cabinet had also allowed the PR to utilize the foreign exchange earned by the institution for the purchase of spares.
The Lahore Express, which would start running from Oct 15, replacing the Shalimar Express, will comprise 17 coaches — including three rakes, two air-conditioned parlours and as many lower AC coaches.
The train will leave the Lahore city railway station at 6:30am and reach Karachi at 10:30pm. It will make three 25-minute technical stoppages at Khanewal, Rohari and Kotri. It will also stop for three minutes at Hyderabad.
Track doubling: The federal government has approved the feasibility report for doubling the rail track between Lalamusa and Lodhran, Railways chairman Saeeduz Zafar said on Saturday.
Talking to reporters before the inauguration of Lahore Express, he said the project could not be initiated this year as there had been no budgetary allocation in this regard.
However, he said, the government had promised to make the allocation in the next budget. He said a heavy investment was needed as laying of train track cost Rs16 million per kilometre.
The Lodhran-Lalamusa section is about 250 kilometres long.
He said an agreement would be signed with a Vienna-based firm for the replacement of 250 km track. The firm, he said, would extend a $40 million soft-term loan (at 4.5 per cent interest rate). A French company had replaced 150 km track last year.
Answering a question, he said the railways had not been asked to provide any logistics support to the US-led forces engaged in attacks on Afghanistan. Nor, he said, it had prepared any contingency plans in this regard.
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