ISLAMABAD: A Supreme Court hearing on the state of affairs in Pakistan Railways exposed on Monday an amazing tale of ineptness where one of the largest state entities was turned into a cesspool of corruption in a systematic and deliberate manner.
“Ninety metric tons of silver worth millions was sold for mere Rs28,000 as scrap, while a light bulb worth Rs60 is being purchased at Rs400, whereas absence of maintenance turned expensive locomotives into junk one by one, besides a Grade-18 officer, a blue-eyed boy of the railways minister, is promoted to hold a Grade-20 post of secretary purchase,” deplored Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, who is heading a two-judge bench that had taken notice of the recent death of a pensioner.
The chief justice ordered Attorney General Maulvi Anwarul Haq to help Railways Chairman Javed Ahmed and Railway Board’s secretary Shafeequllah in preparing corruption references to be sent to the National Accountability Bureau against dishonest employees.
NAB Chairman Admiral (retd) Fasih Bokhari was directed to see whether incriminating evidence was available to charge the corrupt elements for selling scrap at throwaway prices.
Former railways minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed moved an application to become party in the case. He alleged that corrupt officers of the department were leading an extravagant life at the cost of the common man.
Train operations, he said, had been suspended and passengers were sleeping on platforms and getting food from Data Darbar.
The chief justice observed that the railway system has been dumped like a junk and the nation was suffering. The aspect that troubled the chief justice most was that even minor repairs were not done, with the result that 360 locomotives came to a grinding halt one after the other.
“Your efficiency can be gauged from the fact that the electricity wires meant for electric trains from Lahore to Khanewal have been stolen,” the chief justice observed. He said train tickets were sold in advance outside ticket counters and tickets were not available at railway stations.
Sheikh Rashid submitted a March 19, 2011, letter of the general manager (operations) to the railways chairman which stated that it had become difficult to maintain credible train operations and punctuality of express trains because of frequent locomotive failures. The average locomotive breakdown is as high as 10 a day, the letter said, adding that of the 500 locomotives, only 156 were functioning.
“If there is one major reason for this grim situation, it is the non-availability of locomotives from the latest fleet of 69 Chinese locomotives (imported during Musharraf’s period),” the letter said, adding that the $15.2 million “Maintenance and Spares Contract” signed with the Dalian Locomotive Works of China in September 2009 had failed to produce results since none of about 50 latest locomotives had been brought into operations.
The GM operations also said that scrutiny of spares brought through contract revealed glaring discrepancies, like a large number of items were imported although these could have been procured locally, saving valuable foreign exchange.
However, the shelf-life of some of the items is too short, and, therefore, difficult to use. These were wasted and damaged in stores.
Similarly, prices of some of the spares are excessively higher than those of the last purchase. Inflationary trends did not justify the excessive price, the letter said, adding that in some cases spare parts were more expensive than the entire unit.
The letter also cited an example where an air cooler, a part of a compressor costing Euros 23,557, was bought for Euros 27,227. “One safety valve of the cooler is not only more expensive than the cooler itself, but more expensive than the entire compressor,” the letter deplored.
Sheikh Rashid said in his application that currently not a single freight train, the main source of railways income, was plying when there were 15,000 freight wagons and 1,500 coaches available. As a result, the entire transportation business had gone to the private sector which had doubled its tariff.
He said locomotives had intentionally been damaged to import more for obvious reasons, besides 200 coaches were imported from China despite the fact that the same could have been manufactured in the local Carriage Factory in Islamabad. As a result of that, scores of labourers have lost their jobs. Engineers have also been sent on forced leave.Likewise, crankshaft of locomotives worth Rs10 million was damaged because of the use of substandard lubrication oil.
Railways needed Rs2.2 billion to pay the salary and pension of its employees but it was not getting the money from the government.
The railways chairman submitted that arrangements for disbursement of pension through banks near pensioners’ homes would be completed within a month, but Eid advance would be paid through the old system.
The court ordered the chairman and the board’s secretary to look into the matter and see if the engineers who had been sent on leave could be brought back to resume work if there was no charge of misconduct against them.
The court also offered to direct certain organisations like NLC, HMC or KPT to help out the railways and ordered the AG to convene a meeting of the chairman and secretary to come up with a plan for revamping the organisation.
The court noted that it had already issued a direction in the Karachi case for recovery of land grabbed by the land mafia and ordered the railways to approach the Sindh administration in this regard.
“Railways should take steps to make it functional as early as possible,” the court said.
The proceedings were put off till Nov 10.
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