Minister Khwaja Saad Rafique sees signs of improvement in the Pakistan Railways (PR) under him.

The PR is generating more money and both passenger-train punctuality and goods-train frequency are increasing. Under a revival plan, the PR is in dialogue with China to upgrade its main line which connects Karachi through Rohri, Khanewal, Lahore, Lalamusa to Rawalpindi. China is also helping set up a dry port in Havelian for holding containers and about two million tonne goods per year could be handled from Khunjerab to Havelian as a pilot project. A new track is being planned to connect Gwadar and Karachi as well as a track from Gwadar to Dera Ghazi Khan through Khuzdar, Baseema and Jacobabad.

Under Khwaja Saad Rafique, the PR has earned more than the revenue targets set by the government for the first two quarters of the ongoing fiscal. However, its deficit has soared to Rs12.421 billion – the organisation earned Rs11.385bn while its expenditure remained Rs23.807bn from July 1 to Dec 31, 2013, according to a statement sent to the ministry of railways.

A senior official of the railways’ commercial wing who would rather stay unnamed says ‘fare rationalisation’ and improvement in punctuality has increased earnings. “But yes there has also been an increase in expenditure. The operational cost constitutes the main component of expenditure and price of high speed diesel has gone up sharply.”

Set up by the same British rulers, the PR is quite often compared to its Indian counterpart, which was turned around and developed into a world model in the space of seven years. “It was Sutesh Kumar who formed guidelines for the revival of Indian railways as the minister in charge,” a PR official recalls. “His successor Lalu Prasad Yadav continued with the implementation of the same policies and converted Indian railways into the world’s only profitable rail organisation.”

By contrast, the PR has been run on an ad hoc basis for long. In the year 2000, then minister Javed Ashraf Qazi constituted an executive committee to supervise the PR in the name of reorganisation. The committee, which has questionable legal basis and which was founded after advice from a consultant appointed by the World Bank, still runs the department. Many argue the old railways board which had worked successfully for many decades until then should have been continued with. The commercial wing official says the board should be restored immediately.

Ishaq Khan Khakwani, a former railways minister, told Dawn that under the current executive-committee arrangement, decisions are recorded without stating the individual opinions of the members. “It is the prerogative of an individual official to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ which is being denied here,” Mr Khakwani says. “The entire committee is held accountable for a wrong decision. This is the biggest lacuna in the system and the weight is tilted in favour of the chairman.”

Engineer Mohammad Iqbal Khatri, a retired additional general manager of railways and a member of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport Pakistan, says the PR’s planning had not been in line with the international policy on account of ever-increasing cost of operation and maintenance.

“Internationally today, both moveable and immovable assets are kept to the bare minimum requirements,” Mr Khatri says. “Condemned or inactive assets are disposed of while operation and maintenance of assets are outsourced to save expenditure on overhead charges. For whatever reasons, the PR has not been able to maintain its assets. It should give priority to the existing assets and to making them effective and efficient to meet the operational requirement.”

Mr Khatri warns against addition in assets without maintenance. “These assets will also face the same fate of lack of maintenance and will ultimately be a burden on the national exchequer. If not governed by international policy of assets management all upcoming projects will have the same fate as has been of the existing infrastructure.”

There are many in the PR who agree with this advice. They say the government must give the PR funds for maintenance and repair of the existing assets and expansion of infrastructure or addition to the assets must be put on hold for now.