Govt transforming Railways into commercial entity
By Khalid Amin

ISLAMABAD—Like other areas of communications, the government is also focusing on transforming Pakistan Railways into a commercially-oriented entity to maximum facilitate the public.
The government is endeavoring to revitalize the railways with the main thrust of current policy is improvement of infrastructure and procurement of essential material for locomotives, coaches, bogie wagons and track rehabilitation of the railway network.
The last three years have witnessed numerousmeasures taken on part of the government in order to put country’s Railways on modern lines.
Some of the initiatives included doubling oftrack from Lodhran to Khanewal and onwards to Raiwind, procurement of 144 DE locos, 775 passenger coaches and 2300 high capacity wagons continues.
Feasibility studies for laying new tracks on Bostan-Zhob-Peshawar, Dina to Mirpur, and Shahdara- Faislabad sections continued. The basic objective of the projects is enhancement in quality of publicservice, boost in freight and passenger business and to run the railways on commercial lines keeping in viewthe national interest.
According to information available, atotal of 19 passenger trains were introduced from August 2004 to August 2007 comprising 12 inter city trains including four non-stop and seven long lead trains.
Other major improvements include a project of rehabilitation of 400 passenger coaches has beenstarted in Carriage factory, Islamabad and computerized reservation facility has been provided at 33 majorRailway stations over the system.
Official sources said by virtue of this on-linecomputerized reservation system, passengers can alsoavail the return journey reservation facility.
Moreover, the facilities of computerizedticketing on-line has been extended to passengers of 33important mail/express trains.
The sources said E-Ticketing system and purchase of tickets through Credit Card from Computerized Ticketing and Reservation at three Major Station of Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi have also been introduced this year.
Under joint venture between Pakistan railways and Pakistan Post, railways tickets are being sold at 52 selected Post Offices.
Significant development in the freight business has also been seen during the last three years with introduction of fast high capacity cargo express six days a week, with new high speed, high capacity wagons between Badami Bagh and Karachi city with reduced time of 35 hours.
Pakistan Railways also introduced Cargo Express three days a week between Faisalabad and Karachi via Multan with 48 hours running time.
Non-bonded container terminal at Moghalpura and Karachi has already started operation while the government made joint venture with private sector and NLC for establishing container terminals at Prem Nagar and Jia Bagga respectively.