LAHORE: The federal government on Saturday appointed Amir Ali Baloch as the chief executive officer (CEO) of the Pakistan Railways (PR) — the country’s second largest state-owned enterprise facing a financial crisis. The appointment of Mr Baloch at the top post was made after the retirement of Shahid Aziz recently.

“Being the CEO, my core priority is to improve our passenger service under the best possible public facilitation method,” Mr Baloch declared while talking to Dawn by phone after taking over the charge of the office of the PR’s CEO/senior general manager.

According to a notification, Mr Baloch has been entrusted with the charge of the CEO with effect from Oct 27, 2023 till appointment of the regular incumbent.

“In pursuance of the establishment division’s notification No.32/2/2019-E-1 of November 11, 2023, with the approval of the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Mr Amir Ahmad Ali Baloch, a BPS-21 of the Railways (Commercial & Transportation) Group, Presently posted as additional general manager (Traffic) is assigned the current charge of the post of Chief Executive Officer/Senior General Manager (BS-22) with effect from October 27, 2023 till the posting of regular incumbent,” reads a notification issued by the Ministry of Railways.

Terms passenger service improvement, revenue increase thru’ freight his immediate targets

Mr Baloch, who has already worked as the director general (Planning), DG (Operations), chief operating superintendent (PR Headquarters), divisional superintendent (Quetta) and chief traffic manager (Dry Ports), is of the view that since the department has been facing financial issues, it would also be his priority to increase the revenue.

“I want to increase the PR earning through freight,” he said, adding that the passenger revenue would ultimately increase if the public facilitation is improved. He said that in the tenure of the outgoing CEO, the PR management had completed 70/78pc work in a bid to introduce the best model for increasing the PR’s freight earning.

“I want to make the railways a self-sustainable organisation,” he said.

The railways is not even able to timely clear the monthly salary and pension of its thousands of employees and pensioners. Since the dues (gratuity etc) of a number the PR employees retired months before are yet to be cleared too, the department has also been facing lack of funds for smooth rail operations.

“We have recently received salary for the month of September and nobody knows when we will receive salary for the month of October,” a train driver told Dawn on the condition of anonymity. He said the employees succeeded in getting September salary after they threatened to observe a wheel-jam strike in recent days.

“We cannot tell you the situation we have been facing since long. And it’s not sure whether we come out of such a worst situation or not,” he added.

It is pertinent to mention that PR’s outgoing CEO Shahid Aziz had, on October 27, sought an urgent need for a Rs35bn bailout package to keep the railways on track.

While talking to journalists, he had said Rs4/5bn were required to clear the salaries, allowances etc, Rs8bn to Rs10bn for track and the rolling stock and Rs20bn to clear the pending liabilities.

Published in Dawn, November 12th, 2023