ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Railway cannot provide transportation services to Nato because of a shortage of locomotives, Federal Minister for Railways Haji Ghulam Ahmed Bilour said on Friday. "We are already short of locomotives to meet local freight requirements. How we can arrange locomotives for Nato supplies?" Railway Minister said while talking to media persons here.
Rejecting a news report regarding provision of three routes for transportation of Nato goods, the Minister said that his ministry had no such information and the news published in a section of the press was "baseless". Commenting on the future strategy, he said the Ministry would spend around Rs 22.8 billion to execute 37 projects for rehabilitation of its infrastructure and reinvigorating services in 2012-13, making the organisation a profit-earning entity.
"During 2012-13, priority will be given to procurement of new locomotives as railways is currently facing shortage of around 500 locomotives." He said the government had allocated Rs 2.5 billion for procurement of around 200 locomotives to help bridge the engine shortfall, particularly for freight services, adding that Rs 1 billion would be spent on special repair of 150 locomotives.
His ministry, Bilour said, would assign second proority to the rehabilitation and dualising railway tracks for which Rs 3.8 billion had been earmarked for the next financial year. "The ministry will spend Rs 1.5 billion for dualising the Khanewal-Raiwind track, Rs 638 million on Lodhran and Khanewal, Rs 300 million on Shahdara-Lalamusa and Rs 217 million on Shahdara-Faisalabad track."
He said the ministry was still trying to recover the damage done to the railways' assets in incidents after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in 2007 and by 2010 floods, adding: "Rs 800 million and Rs 250 million have been earmarked, respectively, to repair the damaged infrastructure." However, he said a major chunk of the budget would be spent on procurement and manufacture of 202 modern passenger coaches from China.
Bilour said that his ministry would launch a pilot project for mechanisation of track maintenance system, besides rehabilitation and conversion of 400 coaches at a cost of Rs 116 million. The minister said that the ministry had already initiated a pilot project for manufacturing of five 3,000HP locomotives to efficiently run its passenger and train services.
He said a 'Project Management Unit' was also being established in the ministry that would help execute different projects in a smooth manner avoiding procedural delays. Bilour said Rs 300 million would be spent on strengthening and rehabilitation of 159 'weak bridges' to avoid any untoward incident. "Two dry ports will be set up at Prem Nagar and at Shershah Railway Station for which Rs 494 million and Rs 485 million have been allocated respectively," the minister maintained.