LAHORE, March 24: Only one major passenger train will be leaving Balochistan capital for upcountry destinations with the closure of Quetta Express with effect from Saturday.

“Mehran and Abaseen expresses have already been closed down owing to shortage of locomotives. Now Jaffar Express is the only train that will be taking passengers to and from Quetta to other parts of the country,” said a senior officer of PR’s commercial branch at its headquarters in Lahore.

Acute shortage of locomotives had forced the Pakistan Railways administration to temporarily suspend operation of more passenger trains, increasing the number to record 128 on Saturday.

Out of a fleet of 520 diesel and electricity-run locomotives, only 76 were operational on Saturday, said the officer.

“We require at least 150 locomotives to operate all 204 passenger trains. Of the out-of-order locomotives, 46 require repairs on a small scale and will be made operational within a week or so after the Rs600 million are released for the purpose. Locomotives in need of overhaul or repairs on a large scale require Rs50 million each,” said the officer who sought anonymity.

Frequent failures of available locomotives have made it difficult to maintain credible operations and punctuality of all passenger and freight trains, resulting in daily protests by commuters and deteriorating financial health of railways, said an officer of PR’s commercial branch at its headquarters in Lahore.

“For the first quarter of 2011-12, the railways income remained Rs351.5 million which is Rs427.7 million less than the corresponding period of previous fiscal. Besides, the inordinate delay in carrying out repairs of non-functional locomotives resulted in a loss of over Rs4.6 billion till July 30 last year.

Non-availability of Rs11.1 billion, approved by the federal cabinet under the PR bailout package more than a year ago, has been the root cause of the present state of affairs. “Had the sitting railways minister taken pains for the release of funds for locomotives in time, the situation would not have been so worsened now,” said the officer.

Meanwhile, President Asif Ali Zardari has summoned Pakistan Railways high-ups in Islamabad on Monday to discuss with them re-structuring plan for the organisation and to ascertain the causes of its present state of affairs.

“The ongoing projects to make the railways an efficient public sector organisation and to improve the service of its first trans-country container train to Iran and Turkey will also be discussed during the meeting,” a senior officer at the railways headquarters in Lahore told this reporter on Saturday.

The president would be apprised of the acute shortage of locomotives that has badly affected passenger trains’ operation.