Survey of flood-hit areas: passengers suffer as Railways officials pay lavish visits

Lavish visits of Pakistan Railways officials to the flood-hit areas are costing the national exchequer millions of rupees besides causing great sufferings to the passengers, Business Recorder learnt Friday. According to sources, the Railway authorities had to remove over a dozen Air Conditioning (AC) coaches from at least three passenger trains to facilitate the visit of Divisional Superintendent (DS) Karachi with other officers to the flood-hit Dadu.
For providing an AC coach with saloon for the DS, who was to visit Dadu for inspection of fresh floods and its possible impacts on railway installations, some of the power-vans of the said trains were removed causing complete deletion of AC coaches of three upcountry trains, sources said.
After the protest of hundreds of passengers who had booked tickets for lower AC and Business Class in Awami Express, Millat Express and Karachi Express, railways had to refund at least Rs 3 million to them causing losses to the crisis-hit railways department.
While the three trains had to run without AC coaches for shortage of power-vans, the divisional officers, what the sources alleged, enjoyed the saloon coach during their visit to interior Sindh on Thursday. On the other hand the passengers who had reserved seats at least 15 days earlier were shocked when they were informed about the unavailability of seats/coaches, sources said.
Talking to Business Recorder, Manzoor Razi, Chairman, Railways Workers Union, said that the incident was an example of lavish expenditures of railways high-ups, who, despite the losses of billions of rupees, had no interest to save the only poor-friendly source of transport in the country.
This kind of criminal negligence on the part of railway administration would further aggravate the situation as PR is already facing shortage of engines and coaches, he added. After the return of official delegation from interior Sindh, sources claimed, the divisional administration on Friday managed to joint two AC coaches to each train departing from Karachi. However, despite repeated attempts Aftab Memon DS Karachi and Kamran Saeed Divisional Commercial Officer could not be reached for their comments.