KARACHI, June 14: The Pakistan Railways is not in a position to take over the abandoned Hyatt Regency project, built on the railway ground, and turn it into a viable proposition due to the accumulated interests on its principal amount, said federal minister for communications and railways Lt-Gen (retd) Javed Ashraf.

However, he said, the project is now being handled by the Privatization Commission.

Gen Javed Ashraf was talking to a group of newsmen after unveiling the plaque at a ground-breaking ceremony for reconstruction of NMB Wharf at the Karachi Port on Friday.

Responding to a question the minister said that all encroachments on the railway land would be removed, including the commercial concerns.

“The priorities have already been worked out and accordingly in the first phase the commercial concerns and posh buildings are being handled.”

He said the government was concerned about the poor families who had raised homes on the railway land. This was the reason that the provincial government had been asked to arrange alternative plots for the families before removing the residential quarters from the railway land.

Regarding revival of the Karachi Circular Railways (KCR), the minister said the project was being handled by the city district government. When his attention was drawn towards the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) for the coming fiscal year in which no amount had been earmarked for the purpose, the minister said many important projects for Karachi, like northren bypass, Lyari bypass, water supply and other schemes, had been made part of the new PSDP. He hoped that the KCR project might be included in the next PSDP.

He denied the impression of any bottlenecks in developing the Gwadar Port due to infrastructure problems and said that the progress of work on the port was not only satisfactory but six weeks ahead of the schedule. The Chinese experts have been working on the project and the dredging work was in progress, he added.

The communications minister said that after many years of running in lose the Pakistan National Shipping Corporation had come out from the red and earned profits because of its structural reorganization and it was being run on a commercial basis by allowing it to follow routes where they get cargo instead of operating on fixed routes.