KARACHI, July 9: The Pakistan Railways have failed in ensuring the arrival and departure of trains in the scheduled time, as trains have been arriving five to 12 hours late at the city for the fifth consecutive day, causing immense problems to passengers and their relatives.

The departure timings have also been disturbed due to the late arrival of trains from the up-country, the railway officials said.

They said the night coach, coming from Lahore, was scheduled to arrive at Karachi at 9:40am on Wednesday, but it was late for more than 12 hours and reached here at 10:00pm. A night coach from Faisalabad, which was scheduled to reach Karachi around 9:30am, arrived here at 9:30pm.

A railway official admitted that all other trains had also been arriving late in the city due to the poor visibility and bad weather in many areas of the country.

“Once the schedule is disturbed, it takes time to be restored,” he said, but did not mention as to how much time the railway authorities needed to revive the disturbed schedule of trains.

People have been suffering from the mismanagement of the railway authorities, as the railway officials have failed to inform people about the accurate timings for arrival and departure of trains.

An intending passenger told Dawn that he had to come to the City Station thrice to board Karakoram Express, as it got late for many hours. “Whenever, I reached the station, I was told that the train would arrive after two or three hours. I was misguided every time by the railway personnel,” he said.

The people, coming to receive their relatives at railway stations, had also been facing same problems.

The personnel at the railway inquiry were unaware of accurate timings, sources said. He added that it was due to the failure of railways internal communication system — ‘microwave system’.

The personnel at the railway inquiry were not informed about the tentative timings for arrival and departure of trains by the railway operation control department.

The microwave system of railways had gone been out of order for the last one year from Karachi to Sukkur, sources said. The railway authorities had failed to get it repaired due to which the internal communication had totally collapsed. The officials had to use PTCL lines to get connected with each other, which was an expensive mode of communication, the sources added.

They said the automatic signal system was also not working # properly.

The trains were being run on manual signal system, which was also a major cause of delay in the arrival and departure of trains.

If the automatic signal system was improved, the train schedule could be followed to a great extent, they claimed.

The sources said that the railway authorities had announced to establish an emergency centre at all railway stations to guide intending passengers about the railway timings, but no such arrangement had been made so far.