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| July 27, 2005 | Wednesday | Jumadi-us-Sani 19, 1426 |
Signalling LoI yet to be approved by govt: PR
LAHORE, July 26: The Pakistan Railways authorities claim the modern signalling project’s Letter of Indent (LoI) was cancelled as it was yet to be approved by the government.
Sources however say the China National Machinery Import and Export Corporation (CMC) received the approval of the LoI by Pakistan’s Ministry of Finance in July last year.
“The Planning Commission never rejected the PC-I. Instead the commission asked the Ministry of Railways to re-negotiate the credit terms with the CMC. This was done and the CMC received an all-clear letter from the ministry in the first week of July last year after clearance from the Ministry of Finance,” they said.
The PR says initially the project of modern signalling was conceived for the Shahdara-Rohri section but on invitation of bids it was realised that fair competition could not take place because only two Chinese firms had participated in the bidding and that the cost was too high i.e. about Rs9 billion.
Sources however said the final cost of the PC-I was Rs7.9 billion. There had been four rounds of tendering since August 2001, and then the award of LoI on July 3, 2003, after anticipatory approval by the ECNEC and the celebrated signing of pre-contract agreement on Nov 3 the same year in the presence of President Gen Pervez Musharraf and his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao in Beijing.
“The cost of US$111 million is the best after four tenders and one re-negotiation. Top western companies — Siemens and Bombordier — were partners with the Chinese bidders,” they said
PR high-ups said provision of modern signalling on main line from Karachi to Peshawar would cost about Rs28 billion and it was not possible for the organization to arrange so much funding. So it was considered appropriate to go in phases.
Sources said the main line up to Lalamusa or Faisalabad could not be dualized which was a prerequisite for the modern signalling system.
According to PR high-ups, the Planning Division and the Ministry of Railways agreed that the establishment of new signalling system should synchronize with the dualization, improvement and rehabilitation of track project on Lodhran-Khanewal and Kotri-Rohri sections in phases. Karachi-Kotri already had auto-block modern signalling. Track from Kotri to Rohri was being upgraded for 140 KM/hour speed so it was considered more appropriate to install modern signalling on this section and accordingly PC-I had been submitted to the planning commission.
Sources said the Ministry of Railways was ignoring the 450 km crucial track from Rohri to Lodhran, which had maximum load of traffic from Karachi and Quetta. In future, the track would also be handling the Gwadar traffic.
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