LAHORE -  The coal kept on falling off the hopper wagon of Railways due to some fault as the door opened automatically during the journey from Port Qasim to Sahiwal, raising a question mark on the performance of the newly-assembled freight train in Pakistan with sole aim of transporting imported coal to 1,320MW power plant in Sahiwal.

According to official sources, the Pakistan Railways has now decided to develop and install a device in all hopper wagons, making it impossible to unlock the doors easily and avoiding such incidents from happening in the future.

The incident created a huge mess in the power plant over this negligence, which though is not huge, but can possibly open more avenues of theft and a debate whether the railways is the safe mode of coal transportation or not, as the whole power generation of 1,320MW is now directly linked to the smooth and safe operations of Railways freight trains, they added. They said though the Pakistan Railways has apparently constituted a committee to investigate the missing large shipment of the coal from a hopper wagon in the second freight consignment from Port Qasim to Sahiwal but actually it was clear from the day one that coal fell off the wagon, the door of which went open due to a fault.

As per sources, this was pointed out by railways workers to the assistant station master of Feroza Railway Station who got the train stopped immediately. The assistant station master asked PWI (Permanent Railways Inspector) to remove the coal lying on sideway of track between Jetha Butha and Feroza rail stations. The two unknown railways stations are between Khanpur and Liaqatpur stations.

It is to be noted that Railways Minister Khawaja Saad Rafique had inaugurated the new Hopper wagons and locomotives at Lahore Railway Station in December last year, calling it a historic day for the railways that rehabilitated locomotives and assembled the wagons. Addressing the opening ceremony, he said 780 latest Hopper wagons would be used for transportation of coal. He said 200 wagons had come from China while 580 would be manufactured in the country out of this 40 had been made while 60 more would be made till March.

The minister said Hopper wagons had a capacity of carrying 70 tonnes of coal while it could unload coal within 30 seconds. He said freight train capacity had increased to 3400 tonnes. The minister said the Pakistan Railways would earn about Rs5 to 6 billion annually for transportation of coal to Sahiwal Coal Power plant.

The officials said that more than 22 tons coal disappearances owing to technical fault just on the second day of operation has raised the question mark on the performance of hopper wagons which was manufactured in China and assembled in Pakistan.

The Pakistan Railways GM operations has constituted a three-member committee comprising a goods deputy chief operating superintendent, a carriage and wagons deputy chief mechanical engineer, and a director of the coal freight transportation company to probe the matter. The committee has not been given a timeframe to complete the inquiry.

According to reports, some days back around 22 tonnes of coal, meant for the first-ever coal-fired power plant project in the country, mysteriously went missing from the bogey of a Sahiwal-bound train.

The incident surfaced just two days after Punjab Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif welcomed in Qadirabad a freight train carrying the first consignment of coal from Karachi for the coal-fired power plant. Addressing a ceremony, the chief minister said 12,000 tonnes of coal had arrived for Sahiwal coal power project.

The $1.8 billion Sahiwal power plant has two units of 660MW each and would be first power plant to be run on imported coal. An estimated 4.48 million tonnes of coal is required annually for the plant, based on a calculation of 22 hours of power generation per day.