ISLAMABAD: The first half of the current financial year 2022-23 brought “more bad news for Pakistan Railways (PR) as the unprecedented floods due to climate change played havoc with the already dilapidated infrastructure”, with PR having faced a net deficit of almost Rs3 billion in this period and earned Rs28 billion, the federal government admitted in the Senate on Tuesday.
“It not only resulted in revenue loss for PR as train operation remained suspended for more than 35 days, it also put further burden on PR in terms of restoration of railway traffic from its own meagre resources. This has adversely affected the entire financial system of PR and in turn, affected the employees and pensioners of PR due to delayed salaries and pensions,” reveals a written reply from Railways Minister Khawaja Saad Rafique shared in the Senate sitting.
The reply was addressed to questions posed by Mushtaq Ahmed from Jama’at-e-Islami (JI).
The JI senator sought from the minister the details of the steps being taken by the federal government for making railways a profitable public sector organisation indicating details of profit and loss during the current fiscal year.
In reply, the railways minister stated that the PR earned revenue of Rs28.263 billion from July 1 to December 31, 2022, from its operation despite the flood. The expenditure in the same period was Rs52.990 billion.
Out of the total PR expenditure, 35 percent is related to pensions and 33 percent to salaries, said the written reply. In the same period; July-December, 2022, PR received a subsidy of Rs21.750 billion as grant in aid from the federal government. The net deficit for the period July-December was Rs2.977 billion.
In reply to another question by the JI senator, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah revealed that 90 officers of the Cybercrime Wing of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), assigned to the National Response Centre for Cyber Crimes (NR3C) Phase III, were not paid two-month salaries—from July 1 to August 31, last year.
The case for the extension of service contracts of these 90 offices in (basic pay scale- BPS 16 to 18) is pending with the Interior Ministry, the minister added.
After approval from the Interior Ministry, those officials would be paid salaries for the aforementioned period, the interior minister stated.
States and Frontier Regions Minister Talha Mahmood informed the Senate that some 1,315,000 registered Afghan refugees residing in the country had been validated/verified under Document Renewal and Information Verification Exercise (DRIVE).
“The DRIVE exercise has been extended up to March 31, 2023, for residual caseload of Afghan refugees, he stated in a written reply to a question by Seemee Ezdi from Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).
Additionally, 141,676 Undocumented Members of Registered families (UMRF) have also been documented under the DRIVE initiative whose confirmation is in process. If they are found eligible under prescribed criteria, the figure of 1,315,000 would increase further,” Mahmood stated.
Meanwhile, the PTI senators staged a walkout from the house on the “insulting” remarks of BehramandTangi from the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) against the PTI’s Faisal Javed.
PTI’s Mohsin Aziz had taken the floor when Tangi interrupted him. Javed asked the PPP senator not to interrupt Aziz’s speech. Following this, harsh words were engaged between Tangi and Javed.
The PTI senators asked Chairman Sadiq Sanjrani to expel Tangi from the house. Later, they walked out of the house in protest of Tangi’s remarks.
The house was adjourned till Friday.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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