Pakistan Railways (PR) will procure 800 high capacity (Hopper Wagons) from a Chinese company at a cost of Rs 3.92 billion for coal transportation to Qadirabad (Sahiwal) power plant. Director Procurement Ziauddin Ahmad Qureshi of the Pakistan Railways and Chief Executive CRRC Jinan Railway, China signed the purchase agreement on behalf of their respective organisations. Federal Minister for Railways Khawaja Saad Rafique witnessed the signing ceremony.
According to the agreement, the Chinese company would supply these wagons in 6-10 months, which will have the ability to be uploaded in 30 seconds. The minister said that these wagons would be utilised for coal supply to power plant which would generate revenue of Rs 6 billion per annum. The minister said that re-tender of these wagons saved Rs 1 billion to the national exchequer.
Two hundred of these wagons will be in Completely Built Unit (CBU) while 580 will be made at Mughalpura Workshop Lahore starting from July 2016 and will be completed by April 2017. Further 15 out of 20 brake wagons would be built in Pakistan while five in complete shape would come to Pakistan.
These wagons would run at a speed of 100 km/h. The minister said that the Railways is on the way to recovery and a new tender for 585 wagons would be issued shortly. Five freight trains for Qadirabad power plant would be operated from Karachi to supply 4 million tons coal per year (12000 tons coal per day).
The minister said that agreement for procurement of 55 locomotives (4,000-4,500 hp) has already been reached with US company General Electric for coal transportation to the Qadirabad power plant. The company would provide these locomotives in two years. Under the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) $3.7 billion would be invested in Railways during three phases.
The minister said that the present fleet owned by Pakistan Railways contains mostly overage and obsolete design wagons which are not capable to operate at high speed resulting into higher turn round. New design wagons, fitted with roller bearings and air brakes etc, will work at higher speeds to achieve lesser turn round and down time for maintenance. This will lead to better operational efficiency and effective utilisation of assets.
At present, Pakistan Railway has 16179 wagons. 67 percent of these (10887 wagons) consist of 4-wheelers which are being phased out. Currently Pakistan Railway does not have any High Capacity Hopper wagons. Pakistan Railways has only 625 ballast trucks, out of which 122 are already over-aged. Besides these will have a maximum permissible speed of 55 km/h which makes them operationally unviable. b). The present capacity of Pakistan Railways to carry freight traffic is approximately 5 billion tons annually, which is not sufficient to meet the needs of developing economy which requires growing volumes of freight to be transported across the length and breadth of the country.
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