LAHORE, July 7: The Pakistan Railways could not achieve its budget target for 2004-05 and had a shortfall of over Rs838 million, it is learnt. Sources told Dawn on Thursday that in spite of enhancing passenger fares and freight charges in view of raise in POL rates, the railways had a shortfall of Rs498.097 million in passenger and Rs340.800 million in freight earnings during 2004-05.

The earning remained Rs9001.903 million in passengers and Rs5059.200 million in freight sectors against the targets of Rs9,500 million and Rs5,400 million, respectively.

“Ironically, the budget target for the 2005-06 fiscal year has now increased to Rs1,000 million for passengers and Rs6,500 million for freight sectors,” they said.

Admitting the deficit, officials blame the government for landing the railways into hot waters.

“Till the late 70s the railways had been in profit when the government’s tilt shifted to road sector. Maximum investment was made in the sector at the expense of railways.

“During the Afghan war, a state-owned company had been launched which used to load goods from the railways sheds in major cities. Beginning of container traffic by road caused immense loss to the freight business of railways.”

According to them, 80 per cent plans had been made to develop the road sector and 20 per cent for the railways during 1998-2003.

During 1995-60, they said, some 68 per cent plans for railways and 32 per cent for the road had been materialized. The government had also withheld in 1995 the money which it used to inject into the crippling railway sector to get it out of its deficit that had soared to Rs20 billion.

In 1996-97, a plan had been chalked out to extend terminal facilities and line capacity at various goods offices to generate more earning but the proposal was set aside for want of funds.

Officials termed the bifurcation of the railways during Nawaz Sharif’s regime into three sectors —- infrastructure, passenger and freight —- an attempt to paralyze the PR administrative structure. When the military took over in 1999, it had launched with Rs40.8 billion a rehabilitation plan only in core areas to get the railways out of financial deficit.

They cited the late running of trains due to frequent failures of locomotives, defective signals system, short composition of coaches, some temporary and some permanent engineering restrictions on main and branch lines as reasons for decrease in the number of passengers.

“Lack of facilities to load wagons and non-availability of terminals at traffic originating station, short time capacity in goods sheds, insufficient number of wagons, utilization of goods train locomotives for passenger trains in transit led to decrease in freight earnings.

“Thousands of wagons are standing in various yards, awaiting repairs at the Mughalpura Shop.

“The railways had recently got Rs60 billion for its rehabilitation but a plan had been finalized to utilize only Rs13.5 billion to procure 75 locomotives, 1,000 freight wagons and 150 passenger coaches while the rest would go for the improvement of track, bridges, signals and telecom system,” they said.

“What would be the utility of the improved track if we don’t have enough locomotives, freight wagons and passenger coaches?,” the officials asked.