Federal Minister for Railways Sheikh Rashid Ahmed has said that train service to and from Karachi has been restored after preparing the passage to substitute the damaged bridge between Ran Pathani and Dhabeji areas. He was addressing a press conference at Railways Headquarters here on Sunday.
The minister said that 3 to 7 days would be required to make railway trains operations normal by off-loading the burden of 40 passenger trains and 3000 freight coaches stranded at Karachi Railway Station.
Due to the traffic load, he said, 15 trains would be running to Karachi while 9 other trains would keep on running to Hyderabad till restoration of the normal operation.
Sheikh Rashid thanked the business community for its co-operation to face the natural calamity and said that freight coaches were being moved at the priority to minimise hardships of importers, exports and other businessmen.
He said that inquiry of the incidents was underway and any official of Railways found guilty in this regard would not be spared.
The minister said that Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) had been assigned the task to reconstruct the bridge within shortest possible time.
He said that Railways had to face loss of Rs 250-300 million because of damage to the bridge and thanked engineers of Pakistan Army and officials and engineers from Pakistan Railways for restoration of the track.
He said that survey of rail-track and bridges was being conducted with the help of Army engineers for restoring the broken link.
He said that he was fully aware of the difficulty faced by the business community, the passengers as well as the whole economy due to suspension of train operations after damage of the bridge due to floodwater on July 29 last.
The service was resumed on August 5 by preparing a makeshift bridge, however, the fresh spell of water washed away the outer-end of the makeshift bridge on August 13.