Pakistan Railway would enter into an agreement with Pakistan Railways Advisory and Consultancy Services (PRACS), a public limited company, mandating PRACS to take over the task of commercial management, monitoring and customer facilitation of container traffic on PR, said Managing Director PRACS Ashfaq Khattak while talking to APP.
Under the agreement, he said, Pakistan Railway would commit to assign three clear paths for operating container trains from the port city to up country dry ports, particularly Lahore, and Faisalabad. It may be mentioned here that Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz inaugurated the first fast Freight Train by PRACS at Lahore on Monday.
Khettak said previously, Pakistan Railways had assigned paths to one up and one down container trains, unfortunately the paths were rarely operated due to various reasons.
In the present arrangement with PPACS, PR would be under contractual obligation to run trains on three committed paths leaving Karachi at 23:30, 00:30 and 01:30 hours daily, depending on the volume of container traffic, he informed. He pointed out that previously transit times were advertised by PR, but it was under no obligation to ensure deliveries within the specified times.
Now PR would commit to ensure a maximum running time of 30 hours between Karachi and Lahore for trains comprising of ZBFC's (Chinese flat beds) and a maximum running time of fifty hours for trains comprising of conventional stock. PR would commit to a maximum running time of sixty-five hours between Karachi and Rawalpindi and eighty hours between Karachi and Peshawar for trains comprising conventional stock.
MD PRACS said the present system of container booking and handling was obsolete and had not managed to keep pace with the needs of the customer. The conventional procedures were tedious and frustrating for the customers.
PRACS would offer a 'one window operation' to the clients with the facility of depositing documents for carriage of containers at any railway dry port in Pakistan. Booking procedures and documents would be simplified and computerised and made available to the customer via Internet, he informed.
Ashfaq Khattak observed that proper monitoring of the movement of containers was non-existent and the customer had to go from pillar to post to get information of the whereabouts of his consignment.
PRACS would operate on-line computer terminals at the control offices in Karachi Sukkur, Multan, Quetta, Lahore, Rawalpindi, and Peshawar that would enable close monitoring of the movements of containers.
He informed that PRACS would enter into an agreement with some cellular phone company for making the data of container movement on PR network, available to the customer on his mobile phone.
PR had been unable to commit to a fixed time of delivery since a container was handed over till it was delivered to a consignee, he said and added that PRACS would commit to a fixed time of delivery, once complete documents had been handed over by the importer/exporter at any Dry port on PR's network.
He said the freight forwarder, shipping lines and individual consignors felt frustrated to work in the bureaucratic and insensitive environment. But now PRACS, being a public limited company would facilitate the valued customers through its inherent managerial flexibility, prompt decision process and financial manoeuvrability.
He said the existing PR's freight structure for container traffic was not tailored to cater for case-to-case consignments, individual cases and package deals on large consignment or to have a different freight for quality service.
PRACS would introduce a flexible freight structure based on market demand and supply and would charge according to the quality of service being provided.
Ashfaq Khettak said PRACS had committed to pay Pakistan Railways 25percent more revenue than what the Railways had earned form bonded container traffic to and from dry port during the financial year 2004-05.
Besides, PRACS would also bear the expenditure of the dry ports including expenditures on salaries of offices and staff services like electric energy consumption and gas bills, water charges, etc.
PRACS would also be spending money on installation of a computer network system for monitoring of containers on the entire Railway network, he stated.
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