LAHORE, Sept 5: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has his own experience of the railways’ service. “I had an experience of railways service some 15 years ago,” the prime minister said at the inauguration ceremony of the freight express train at the Lahore Cantonment railway station on Monday.

“I had to send a car to Lahore. After being driven from pillar to post at the Karachi railways office, I was told no wagon was available. I contacted a coolie who immediately arranged the transportation of my car to Lahore,” Mr Aziz said.

“The Railway has to re-structure itself by introducing reforms in its management, marketing and operational sectors to make it a profit-oriented entity. Railway ko chal chalan badalna hoga,” the prime minister said.

Terming the railways backbone of the transport system of any country, he said the government would provide financial support to the organization for modernization and upgradation of the network, especially for the signalling system and safety gadgets, to ensure efficient logistic movement.

“We have the resources, the manpower and the force to make progress. Railway authorities got the proposal to launch the freight express train approved some three weeks ago. And today the train has been launched. If it was so easy it should have been done much earlier. Where there is a will there is a way,” the prime minister said.

The need of the hour, he said, was to formulate rational policies, follow-ups for their implementations and to set and achieve targets.

Railways has to improve passenger and freight traffic by introducing aggressive marketing techniques and trends. The marketing department must be revived and incentives should be offered to cargo agents.

“The freight sector is the lifeline of the railways all over the world. The earnings of our railways have been decreasing although we have new coaches, wagons and locomotives. Railways has to adopt a customer-friendly attitude to attract more freight business so that its profit could be utilized to provide more facilities to passengers,” he said.

The new freight train was being run through public-private partnership and in future more trains will be operated on the same pattern.

Mr Aziz was optimistic that the new train would restore the confidence of the business community.

Railways Minister Mian Shamim Haider said in his welcome address that the new freight train comprised 60 ton capacity wagons and would run daily on Lahore-Karachi sector. It could carry goods’ containers at 90km/h speed to Karachi from Lahore and vice versa in 28 hours.

He said another freight train would be started from Faisalabad to Karachi by the end of October on daily basis.

The PR had entered into a joint venture with Pakistan Railways Advisory and Consultancy Services (PRACS) for starting the freight train. The PRACS would be handed over the commercial management, monitoring and customer facilitation of container traffic in phases.

The PRACS would provide personalized service to customers through one-window operation and ensure freight’s delivery to the doorstep.

The PRACS would introduce a flexible freight structure based on market demand and supply and would charge according to the quality of service being provided.

It would also install a computer network system for monitoring of containers on the entire railways network and would also operate on-line computer terminals at the control offices in Karachi, Sukkur, Multan, Quetta, Lahore, Rawalpindi and Peshawar.

The PR would be under contractual obligation with the PRACS to run trains on three committed paths, leaving Karachi at 11.30pm, 12.30am and 1.30pm daily, depending on the volume of container traffic.

Federal Industries Minister Jehangir Tareen, National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Railways chairman Sardar Tufail, Punjab Governor Khalid Maqbool, Punjab Special Education Minister Qudsia Lodhi, senior railway officials and representatives of business community were also present on the occasion.