Talking to journalists recently at the Locomotive Factory at Risalpur, where he had gone to participate in a ceremony marking the rolling out of the sixth locally manufactured locomotive, the Minister for Railway, Mian Shamim Haider, made an important disclosure.
He told journalists that a study is under way to convert Pakistan Railways into a state corporation with full financial autonomy.
The proposed move, one cannot but agree with him, would improve its service and facilitate the implementation of development projects in due course. In fact, the plan is in accord with what is going on in most of the other countries running good railway systems.
In fact, until about two decades ago, Pakistan Railways was regarded as an efficient and reliable mode of transportation for all sorts of purposes. People having to travel for reasons of necessity preferred it to road transportation for its decent standards of safety and comfort, while many leisure travellers considered rail journey an enjoyable experience.
Things started deteriorating as the organisation slid into mismanagement and corruption while successive governments also began using it or rather misusing it to provide employment to their party activists and supporters.
Thousands of people were inducted in different departments of the Railways on the basis of political affiliations rather than professional competence, without a thought to the costs involved.
As if that was not bad enough, in many cases, these recruits regularly drew salaries without work, a fact borne by a recent Railway report, which reveals that the organisation has eliminated 20,000 ghost pensioners.
Little surprise then that while the quality of the Railway's service, over the years, declined to an unacceptable level, its finances dipped to a point where it became a liability rather than a profit-making entity for the government.
Recently, the government introduced a number of measures to improve the quality of service as well as the finances of the organisation.
These included bringing down the number of employees from 135,000 to 96,000. And, of course, it has been freed from the burden of paying pensions to as many as 20,000 non-existent retired employees.
Ticketless travel has also been brought down, and the organisation says it has collected the long over due bills of Rs 250 million and Rs 108 million from the Punjab Food Department and the Ministry of Defence, respectively. Extra revenue is also to be generated through commercialisation of the Railway lands and auction of various vending services.
Still, it will take time and special efforts for the Railways to overcome the outstanding deficit and start making profit. Hence it makes sense for the government to consider granting it the status of a corporation with full financial autonomy. That should allow it to run an efficient service without undue interference from the government.
The proposed measure can also help it to turn the previous losses into equity, and even think of floating market shares. As a corporation it will also be able to freely borrow the needed finances from banks.
In doing so, though, it must not go overboard in the name of better quality of service. A balance in the debt-equity ratio has to be maintained. One hopes the study that the minister said is under way will be completed expeditiously, and that in order to avoid any missteps it would be presented for public debate and discussion before implementation.
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