The current Govt. is particularly focusing more on the betterment of the Railway system. Twenty more VIP passenger trains are to be launched soon. The ministry is planning to launch these trains in order to revive the Railways system and these new trains will be operational soon, said the Sheikh Rasheed, Minister for the Railways.
Minister for Railways further mentioned that issuing tenders is under process. These tenders include the doubling of the Sialkot and Faisalabad-Lahore tracks along with the up-gradation of the 1680 km long track of ML-2 and ML-4. This announcement was made by the Railway Minister during his talk at the Faisalabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FCCI) with the business community.
Sheikh Rasheed highlighted that there is a need for a strong economy for it’ll co-relate with the strong defence as well as for an independent foreign policy. He even appreciated the FCCI for being the first platform to highlight the very importance of the stability of the economy.
He also called out the former government in wasting the money in the launch of the orange train and $ 2 billion for only this project which only covered only 27 km of an area. He said that with this much of money he would have laid new railway tracks all over Pakistan.
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Upon his meeting with his ministry regarding financial matters, Rasheed said:
“ We are planning to launch 20 new VIP high-speed passenger trains. He also mentioned that they have to repair old and abandoned bogies to start 20 new trains.”
He further mentioned that ministry needs Rs. 31 billion for salaries, Rs. 25 billion for the payment of loan instalments, Rs. 35 billion to pay pensions and Rs. 18 billion for oil.
The launch of High-Speed Trains
Sheikh Rasheed has said that once the ML-1 is completed, Pak Railways will launch high-speed trains with the speed of 160 km/hr. The speed of these trains will be increased up to 260 km/hr in the later phase.
Rasheed further brought this into notice that it’s in Pakistan that passenger trains are bringing a profit of more than Rs. 2 billion which is quite a big deal because in the rest of the world, the passenger trains are not meant to run for a profit.
Regarding the VIP trains, he announced that on March 23, new VIP “Jinnah Train” will be started and it’ll travel between Lahore and Karachi. Rasheed also said that a new train named “Sir Syed Train” is also under process and would be launched soon, it would run between Faisalabad and Karachi.
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