LAHORE: The Pakistan Railways’ failure to provide adequate number of coaches has forced passengers to travel on the rooftops and side space of the locomotives running on routes such as Lahore-Narowal, Gujranwala, Shahdara, Sargodha and other cities.

There are unfortunate reports of falling of passengers on ground from the top of the rakes while riding the overcrowded trains.

“Passengers have to face a great deal of inconvenience due to less number of coaches. A number of people have to travel atop the rakes and side spaces of the locomotives due to overcrowding,” Tufail Ahmad told Dawn at the Shahdara railway station.

Akram, another passenger, said Minister for Railways Sheikh Rashid Ahmed should focus on it and ensure provision of coaches for the trains by which thousands of people travel daily between Lahore and other stations.

The railways has been facing shortage of passenger coaches for the last many months especially after the launch of new trains on the orders of the minister. For the news trains, the officials used additional rakes (by refurbishing these) which were meant for running the trains in case of accidents or derailments. This led to the shortage of the coaches.

The PR has also failed to procure hundreds of new coaches from China due to procedural issues. The minister in recent press conferences announced withdrawal of new trains due to decaying track, increasing accidents, faulty signalling system, shortage of coaches etc at the main and other lines. However, he pledged to launch new freight / goods trains in future despite knowing about the operational issues.

The passengers demand that the PR should immediately provide more coaches for the trains running on local routes.

“One has seen many accidents due to overcrowding and people sitting atop the trains,” said Irfan who also complained about security issues. He said pick-pocketing was another pestering issue.

PR’s Divisional Superintendent (Lahore) Aamir Nisar Chaudhry admitted the problems being faced by the passengers on various local routes due to shortage of coaches. “In case of such a situation, we first provide coaches to the trains running on the main line (Peshawar to Karachi via Lahore). And after that we provide coaches to the local trains running on branch lines,” he said.

He said that in the recent days, the PR Lahore team added two coaches but the problem still exists.

Published in Dawn, September 18th, 2019