National Assembly Standing Committee on Railways Tuesday strongly recommended that magistracy system should be reintroduced in the Railways to remove impediments in dealing with land encroachers.
The Committee meeting chaired by Sardar Tufail Ahmed Khan MNA in Quetta, also recommended that jurisdiction of the Railways Police also be extended to the Railways land. The Committee was briefed about the position of land encroached by the land mafia and the land reclaimed.
The General Manager Railways informed the Committee that after the separation of executive and judiciary, the Special Railways Magistrate were placed under the administrative control of District and Session Judges and since then they were only conducting work as Judicial Officers with no executive control of either Divisional Superintendent or Director (Property & land).
In order to deal with the problems the restoration of the previous system is imperative, he said. "The previous Magistracy system should be reintroduced in the Pakistan Railways and the authority of Railway Police may be extended to the Railways land in order to effectively deal with the menace of land encroachment," the Committee recommended after hearing the argument.
Earlier, the Divisional Railways Quetta Division briefed the Committee about its working and jurisdiction. He said that Quetta Division was one of the most important Division of Pakistan Railways due to its strategic location and a track spreading over 1330.36 km.
He informed about the ongoing development projects of Railways and utilisation of land in Quetta Railways Division. The Committee appreciated the working of Railways Division, Quetta.
The Committee asked the Railways Ministry to improve the service structure and pay scales of the Railways employees and initiate welfare projects for the employees and their families. The meeting was attended by MNAs Muhammad Farooq Azam Malik, Dev Das, Syed Akhlaq Hussain Abidi and G M (Ops) Pakistan Railways and other senior officers of the Ministry and Quetta Division.