(August-05-2024)
The Chairman of the FPCCI Advisory Board, National Business Group Pakistan, President of the Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum, and All Karachi Industrial Alliance, along with former provincial minister Mian Zahid Hussain, said on Monday that the railway’s dysfunction is a significant barrier to progress.
He said that products delivered by vehicle are more expensive, which hurts the masses and businesses while compromising exports.
According to Mian Zahid Hussain, railways have consistently faced conspiracies to advance influential road transport.
Talking to the business community, the veteran business leader said that until the railways are made to work, Pakistani products will have to be sent to different regions through expensive road transport, which increases their cost.
Similarly, export goods also become expensive, which reduces their ability to compete in the global market.
According to Mian Zahid Hussain, the railways in the neighbouring country of India, which have at least 22,000 trains and 7112 stations and employ 1.3 million people, is the backbone of the economy.
In India, they prepare the railway budget separately from the national budget. Meanwhile, China is rapidly completing railway projects and building a network of railways within the country as well as in many other countries, resulting in a flourishing economy.
420 million Chinese travelled by train in July alone, and the railway moved billions of dollars’ worth of cargo from one location to another.
On the other hand, a conspiracy in Pakistan is destroying the railway, preventing it from providing benefits.
The business leader said that at one time, Pakistan Railways was considered an important, stable, and profitable institution, but a dictator started destroying it just so that truck manufacturing businesses owned by his relatives could flourish.
Later, the transporters became politicians and moved to provincial and national assemblies, delaying the improvement of railways.
Soon, the transporters became so influential that no government would dare offend them by promoting railways.
Mian Zahid Hussain said that now the loss of railways has increased from 37 billion to more than 45 billion because every government has played its role in bringing the railways to the brink of destruction.
The majority of the railway ministers are non-technical. They do not possess the necessary knowledge or attempt to manage affairs.
A dictator also imported engines worth billions of rupees, but instead of using them, they have been rusting for decades.
Mian Zahid Hussain further said that Pakistan’s economy is under pressure at the moment, and to improve it, among other measures, it is necessary to improve the passenger and especially the cargo systems of the railways. At this time, people consider railway travel very unsafe.
For the betterment of our railways, there is an urgent need to stop the declarations and statements and take practical steps so that it can become a profitable enterprise.
