LAHORE, July 15: Railway Minister Ghous Bakhsh Mehr said on Thursday that fares could not be reduced. Speaking at a news conference here, the minister said hike in petroleum prices and increase in salaries and pension had warranted a raise in fares recently.
To provide better facilities to passengers, he said fast trains had been introduced. He said a committee had been constituted to ensure transparency in recruitments in the railways.
Mr Mehr said the railways had planned to introduce a non-stop train between Lahore and Rawalpindi comprising modern Chinese coaches that would reduce travel time to four hours.
He said reservation centres in 20 cities like Sialkot, Sargodha, Rahim Yar Khan, Nawabshah, Sahiwal, Gujranwala, Gujrat, Okara, Sukkur and Nowshera would be computerized by 2005.
He said the railways' income increased by Rs655 million during 2003-04. The minister claimed that with the introduction of Chinese cargo wagons, the travel time between Karachi and Lahore dryport had been reduced from 52 hours to 28.
Some 65 high capacity freight wagons would reach here from China in August to augment the cargo service, he added. He said Lahore to Khanewal double track would be completed by May, 2006. He claimed that overdraft on railways had been reduced by more than Rs2 billion besides the reduction in expenditure of around Rs1,300 million was achieved.
Th minister said the railways was facing difficulties regarding the decrease in the import of furnace oil from four million tons to one million tons this year. It constituted 40 per cent of the freight earnings. The reduction of freight rates of goods in transit to Afghanistan was also affecting its income, he added.
