Pakistan Railways is going to increase fares by 15 percent as the government has approved the demand of the government institution which is facing profound financial crunch. Millions of people who prefer to travel by train; the only cheaper source of transportation, would be facing hardships after the enhancement in fares.
The 15 percent jump in the fares would be implemented shortly as the summary regarding the PR demand has been approved by the Prime Minister to bring improvement in the train services, sources told Business Recorder on Monday. According to sources, PR was all set to issue notification in next few days allowing the increase of 10 to 15 percent for passenger trains while 8 to 10 percent hike was planned for freight trains.
Railway authorities say that as the fares have not been revised for last two years despite hike in oil price in the international market, an increase was inevitable to minimise losses. Sources said after the hike in fares, the price of an economy class ticket from Karachi to Lahore would increase from Rs 1000 to Rs 1170, while the fare from Rawalpindi to Karachi would increase accordingly.
Besides, sources claimed that PR has also decided to eliminate subsidies on fares of the economy class category for different train routes. The PR officials, they said, have written a letter to the federal government, asking it to allow them to accept loan, as they were in dire straits. "Whenever the question of improving the paralysed railway system was raised the first thing, the concerned authorities do is to increase fare which goes through further enhancement after a short span without any positive change in the system," sources said.
Though the Railway authorities have stopped the service of almost 102 passenger trains for what they said shortage of locomotives and losses, no improvement in the existing train services was observed as trains continue to run behind schedule.
Besides the existing locomotives were also not carrying not more than 10 bogies resulting in shortage of seats for those passengers who had to wait for over 15 days for their turn. Contrary to the present railway engines, a powerful locomotive was used to pull almost 20 bogies along the route starting from Karachi to Peshawar. But after the arrival of faulty and weak engines from China, only 8 to 12 bogies were being included in a passenger train, sources added.
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