January 31, 2006	Tuesday	Muharram 1, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, Jan 30: More than 80 per cent bridges, about 100 per cent electric locomotives and 55 per cent wagons of the Pakistan Railways are overage while the rail tracks, laid down in 1910, are far from being safe, it is learnt.

A senior government official told Dawn on Monday that there might be some other reason for Sunday’s accident near Jhelum but assets of the Pakistan Railways were in worst condition and could cause major disasters.

In a background briefing, the official said about 11,700 bridges out of a total of 14,570 had completed their design-life decades ago. Its 65 per cent or 5042 kilometre out of a total of 7,879 kilometre track is overage and that, too, poses serious threat to trains.

“We dream of making Pakistan a regional hub of trade and economic activities by the next decade through rail and road network but major portion of the tracks and most of the bridges are overage and unsafe, the signal and telecom system is obsolete and it is in overall deficit”, said the official.

“The PR is in such a bad shape that we can face frequent disasters”, the official said, adding that almost all the 29 electric locomotives were overage while 55 per cent (303) diesel locomotives out of 551 had completed their design-life years ago.

Of the 23,722 railway wagons, 12,000 are overage while 549 coaches out of 1,843 coaches have completed their life.

The official said this was despite the fact that the total number of diesel locomotives had declined from 579 in October 1999 to about 550. Similarly, the number of coaches had also come down from 2,029 in 1999 to about 1,850. The number of wagons is 23,722 from 25,708 wagons in January 2000.

Keeping in mind its poor conditions, the government had provided Rs9.5 billion and Rs10 billion to the PR during 2004-05 and 2005-06 respectively to minimize risk factor, he said.

The official said that a Rs110 billion federal development programme had been envisaged for the PR’s long term rehabilitation, of which Rs91 billion would be utilised at the rate of Rs13 billion per annum in the next six-seven years.

The official said that the Pakistan Railways had been assigned six crash programmes which would be completed over the next six years at a total cost of Rs65 billion. On completion of these, overall earnings would rise from current Rs15 billion to Rs24 billion in 2010-11. It also included a transit trade of Rs2 billion per annum.