RAWALPINDI: Federal Minister for Railways Khawaja Saad Rafique on Wednesday said that stay orders issued in cases of people illegally occupying Railways land hamper the process of development.

Mr Rafique was at the station to inaugurate the upgraded Awam Express from Peshawar to Karachi via Rawalpindi. The upgrade was carried out by Pakistan Railways and cost Rs100 million from its own resources.

“We started efforts to free Pakistan Railways land from illegal occupants. However, the Royal Palm Club case is still pending with four courts, including the Lahore High Court,” he said.

The minister also gave the example of encroachments on Railways land in Saddar, Peshawar. He said the land is in a prime location and has been illegally occupied by an individual who obtained stay order from the local courts.

Says orders on illegal occupation of Railways land hampered the development process

He added that the case of the Business Train defaulters was with the National Accountability Bureau, which had no time to hear it.

He said Railways had become a profitable organisation as its revenue had increased from Rs18 billion to Rs40bn by June 2017.

“People say privatisation is the solution for bad performance, but the [improved] performance of Pakistan Railways has proved that the government can turn the organisation into a profitable entity,” he said.

Mr Rafique said Railways spent Rs100m to upgrade the track for the Awam Express train, adding that the Allama Iqbal Express, Khyber Mail, Akbar Bugti Express and Bahauddin Zakaria Express would also be upgraded soon.

The Rawalpindi-Kohat train will be revived by the end of October, he said. “Railways have completed upgrading the track and the signal system in this section.”

He added that 11 new railway stations are being established in the country, while work on some will be completed soon.

Railways outsourced the Shalimar Express in 2012, and its earnings increased from Rs660m to Rs1.82bn annually, he said, adding that there is a lot that has to be done to improve the railways.

“Although the PML-N government has done a lot, there is still a need to improve things in Railways. We strengthen the foundations, and in the next 10 to 15 years Railways will have improved further.”

The minister claimed that Railways has become a corruption-free organisation in the last four years.

“There is no corruption in the upper level of the Railways bureaucracy. The corruption is still there in the lower level, and it will end soon, as strict monitoring is being done,” he said.

In response to a question about Sheikh Rashid Ahmed’s claims about holding documents of an LNG agreement between Kuwait and Pakistan, Mr Rafique said he did not want to comment because he did not take Mr Ahmed seriously, and called him a “political joker”.

He said that conspiracies by political and non-political forces, wherein an elected prime minister is removed in such a controversial way, create an uncertain political situation which has a negative effect on the economy.

He added that those blinded in their quest for political victimisation are responsible for halting the country’s economic progress.

“We weren’t allowed to work due to sit-in politics and other conspiracies. If this continued, investors would not come to invest in Pakistan,” he said.

Mr Rafique also quipped that it was a sign of doomsday that Asif Ali Zardari had been acquitted by an accountability court while Mr Sharif’s cases are a top priority for the National Accountability Bureau.

Published in Dawn, October 12th, 2017