ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Railways continues to be the source of bad news for lawmakers as well as the general public. Accumulating losses that run into billions was the answer when more than one member of the National Assembly asked the railways minister on Monday about its current state of affairs.

Ghulam Ahamd Bilour told the house during the question hour that the organisation earned Rs14 billion annually and its salary-related expenditures stood at Rs30 billion.

Moreover, the PR owed Rs82 billion as loan — Rs42 billion foreign and Rs40 billion domestic — which it was finding it difficult to handle, he added.

“With the ongoing pace of PR recovery, I don’t think this government, which has only nine months left, will be able to make any significant improvement in its operation,” Mr Bilour said when the PML-N’s Khurram Dastagir Khan asked about chances of PR’s recovery any time soon. “May be the next government can do better than us,” he said.

But the minister defended his position and said the PR was not doing any better when he took over the charge in 2008 as it continued to suffer from mis-governance and carried bad loans from the past governments.

In a light-hearted tone Mr Bilour then asked: “Can you name any department in the country which is corruption-free? And I am not keeping my eyes closed and over the past few years I have unearthed a number of corruption cases in the PR and handed over corrupt people to police.”

In reply to a question about corruption in PR’s warehouses, Mr Bilour said the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) was carrying out an inquiry into theft of spare parts and the department was expecting a positive outcome.

The minister complained about the shortage of locomotives which led to shutting down of PR’s operations on a number of busy routes.

Although Mr Bilour has failed to turn around the organisation which he largely attributed to the paucity of funds, he regularly attends the house proceedings to answer pinching questions often put by his fellow lawmakers.

So much so Speaker Dr Fehmida Mirza asked him on Monday about once regular train service to her native district of Badin in Sindh which has also been suspended. The minister’s reply was: “You people help me get funds released from the finance division and I will run trains to every nook and cranny of the country.”

When an MQM lawmaker compared the PR with Indian Railways, Mr Bilour said India had over 8,000 locomotives in running condition which was the sole reason behind its good reputation and earnings.

Answering a question, he said 70 per cent of spare parts meant for repair of locomotives were made abroad and he desperately needed money for their timely import.

In a written answer, Mr Bilour said at present Railways had 494 diesel electric locomotives, but 320 of them were not in working condition and required spare parts.

In reply to another question, he said the PR could not conduct a forensic audit because the Auditor General of Pakistan had no such expertise. The government’s auditors could only conduct regulatory, performance, project, and certification audit, he added.

However, he pointed out, on the directives of the Supreme Court five firms had been shortlisted through open competition and as soon this process was completed, forensic audit would be carried out.

The apex court had directed the PR to conduct the forensic audit to determine what actually had gone wrong with the organisation.