ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Railways is under the spotlight once again for its continued losses worth billions of rupees every year with no significant improvement in sight. Its performance has particularly gone down during the current regime of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) which, like the previous government, have failed to turn it around.
The glaring percentage of Railways’ deficit compared to its revenue was discussed threadbare in the Question Hour of the National Assembly here on Friday.
The figures provided in the session painted a gloomy picture indeed. They showed that the losses incurred as on June 30th 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 have been 73.87 percent, 60.11 percent, 105.39 percent and 97.68 percent respectively which are of colossal proportions.
Shazia Marri of Pakistan Peoples Party Parliamentarian (PPPP) asked Minister of Railways to state the percentage of deficit in real terms, which comes to billions of rupees in the previous three years.
The Railways minister admitted that the department suffered massive loss of 47.23 billion during 2020-2021 which is 97.68 percent of the deficit compared to its revenue. The revenue in the above mentioned fiscal year stood at Rs 48.65 billion.
The preceding years have been no different either. In 2019 to 2020, the Railways deficit stood at 105.39 percent compared to the generated revenue. Its revenue stood at Rs47.58 billion while losses stood at Rs50.15 billion during the above mentioned period.
The period of 2018-19 was also not very promising for the department in terms of balance in revenue and expenditure. Rilways made losses of Rs32.76 billion in the year as opposed to a revenue of Rs 54.51 billion which showed 60.11 percent of deficit
The revenue in 2017-18 stood at Rs49.57 billion while it suffered losses worth Rs36.62 billion during the stated period. The percentage of deficit as compared to revenue stood at 73.67 percent.
However, in terms of punctuality of trains in four years, starting from June 30, 2018 till 2020-21, the Railways showed a 74 percent improvement while it obtained 63 percent punctuality ratio of trains in 2019-20.
According to the Railways Ministry, the freight sector also showed considerable improvement as an average of 25,054 tonnes per day was transported from Karachi during 2020-21 as compared to 23.051 tonnes per day during 2019-20.
Pakistan Railways also made considerable progress with regard to safety of trains. One of the major contributing factors towards incidents is trespassing at un-manned level crossings and un-authorized locations. In this regard 40 un-manned level crossings have been upgraded and manned. Moreover, 1561 un-authorized locations (trespassing sides) have been closed. As a result of these measures the number of accidents has drastically reduced from 145 in 2020 to 53 in 2021 during first six months of the financial year 2021-22.
