ISLAMABAD: The railways authorities have decided to modify the rules and regulations and punish those responsible for train accidents after it was established that a recent accident in Karachi took place because of speeding and negligence of drivers.

Railways Minister Saad Rafiq informed the National Assembly’s standing committee concerned that scores of such cases were pending because of lack of stringent punishment.

“We are devising new procedures to punish those responsible for train accidents. If the system is not changed, criminalswill continue to escape punishment,” he said.

Minister for Railways Saad Rafique claims several similar cases pending due to lack of punishment

Mr Rafiq was of the view that human error and negligence, and not the signalling system were responsible for the train accidents.

Furthermore, he said, drivers of the ill-fated train had ignored the yellow and red lights indicated from three locations.

However, the safety level of the railways was far better than many other countries as around 1,400 trains ran across the country round the year, he said.

“We were vigilant but now we are more vigilant,” he said.

Referring to the Karachi accident, he said the preliminary report received recently had blamed the driver and his assistant for the incident which resulted in loss of lives and injuries to passengers.

Cases had been registered against both the drivers who jumped from the engine just before the accident.

A railways official, Aftab Akbar, informed the committee that evidence about the accident had been collected and a final report would be out in five days.

Fortunately, the signalling systems of locomotives leaving Multan and Lahore were functioning properly, he said.

Besides, the minister described the unmanned crossings as the principal source of accidents, but no such crossing had been added to the railway system in the past three years.

Despite the department’s appeal to the provincial governments to close down all unmanned crossings in their areas, only the Punjab government had spent Rs610 million to close 75 spots, he said.

The railways needed Rs5 billion to close unmanned crossings from Peshawar to Karachi, he said and added that a survey to this effect was being carried out.

Besides, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif had promised more money to shut down the remaining unmanned crossings, which would help reduce the number of accidents and deaths by half, Mr Rafiq said, while also expressing hope for the closure of all such crossings with the advent of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

When a member of the committee asked about the project’s viability, Railways Secretary Parveen Agha told the committee that the existing signalling system was not performance-oriented but had been hurriedly and badly conceived.

She said the ministry had carried out an internal inquiry into the project on her instructions and found that 99.9 per cent of equipment worth Rs10bn bought in the first stage was yet to be installed.

The minister said the Islamic Development Bank had backtracked from funding the project partly.

The committee also heard the views on the issue of the Royal Palm Golf and Country Club from the ministry and representatives of the club.

It asked the ministry to furnish complete details of advertisement for inviting bidders to lease the land as well as the club, procedure adopted for short-listing them and the terms and conditions of the lease agreement along with other relevant material.

Published in Dawn, November 10th, 2016