The employees of Pakistan Railways (PR) have strongly rejected the federal governments plan to privatise the only poor-friendly means of transportation. According to PR employees in Karachi City Station the willingness of federal government to privatise the railways would be another wrong step as the government has already experienced losses by selling of some institutions previously.
Terming the state-run entities, including PIA, PR and Pepco, as white elephants, Advisor to Prime Minister on Finance Shaukat Tareen had recently said that it was inevitable that these entities be privatised to save the economy. He said the three public organisations were extracting Rs 200 billion from the pockets of masses.
"Railway based transport is now being used only the poor who cannot afford the high fares of air travelling and other buses," an employee from locomotive department said adding that the government would deprive the poor from this facility too. He said that the government should rather have check on corruption in the ministry of railways as many cases of misappropriation were still lying in wait.
As the people have already seen the ugly picture of Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) after its denationalisation, the government should keep itself away from further privatisation of the rest of institutions, said an employee of the PR land department.
"It is clear that every private company would only focus to earn more with less spending, which would ultimately bring the railways to more devastation," he said adding that the people should protest against such move to save the poor friendly state enterprise. Talking to Business Recorder, Muqaddar Zaman, an official of Railway Workers Union (RWU) said that the union members and railways employees would not accept such move and would protest against it.
"As Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) is a party of poor, farmers, and other lower class employees, the ruling party should not take any step to discourage these people," he added. Further, he said that Pakistan Railways Advisory Consultation Service (Pracs), a private firm, which had given bogies of some trains for goods forwarding, was also owing to millions of rupees to PR.
Which also showed the result of any private companys role in the railways. The other departments where the private companies were involved like Rail Cop and Railway Rehabilitation were also not producing any positive result, he added.
He claimed the private companies cannot get the whole control of PR but they would be interested in some of its departments like the ticketing, freight, and other commercial departments. The RWU official also claimed that Pakistan State Oil (PSO) was showing interest in the freight trade department of PR. However, when tried to contact, no officials of PR were available for comments.
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