LAHORE: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will extend all-out support to Pakistan Railways (PR) in materialising the plan to rehabilitate and modernise its infrastructure, rolling stock and human resource management.

An assurance to this effect was given by Mr Sakamoto, the head of a team of ADB consultants, during a consultative workshop on Railways Strategic Plan at a local hotel on Saturday.

Mr Sakamoto said the ADB team would facilitate the PR in finalising its strategic plan by providing services of international experts. “This plan is not an ADB document, it’s your strategic document. We are facilitating the process, nothing more. This document is for and by Pakistan Railways,” he said.

Earlier, PR Chief Executive Officer Javed Anwar informed the ADB team that a strategy was being formulated encompassing all aspects of Pakistan Railways, including business development, human resource management, rolling stock availability and infrastructure uplift.

“We are heading towards a new era and reinventing PR. Our resolve is to make a comprehensive, workable, useful, futuristic policy and rule book. This is the last opportunity for us to formulate an all-inclusive strategy that will define governance framework for the PR in future,” said Mr Anwar at the workshop, presided over jointly by Adviser to the Minister for Railways Anjum Parvaiz and Railways Board Secretary Parveen Agha.

Through presentations, the participants were informed that the condition of PR assets started deteriorating in 1980s and 90s due to lack of investment, resulting in reduction in number of passenger trains and almost stoppage of freight operations in 2012. However, the PR was able to double its revenue in three years and going ahead of its targets.

At present, focus has been to modernise or upgrade Main Line 1 (ML-1) while planning was under way to modernise and rehabilitate ML-2 and ML-3 as well as new links, the workshop participants were informed.

Published in Dawn, August 20th, 2017