ISLAMABAD               -          The Secretary of the Ministry of Railways Habib ur Rehman Gillani on Tuesday informed the sub-committee of the Public Accounts Committee that 70 percent of railways system was outdated, and has been since 20 years.

While briefing the members of the sub-committee of PAC, which was chaired by PTI-MNA Riaz Fatyana, the Secretary of Railways said that due to the lack of forward planning the railways, which is one of the important departments of the country. has failed to make any visible progress.

He further informed the sub-committee that in order to improve the current situation of railways, the Prime Minister Imran Khan following their request has approved many important posts including; a Business planning expert and a Technical expert which will help them pull the railways out of such a crisis.

He also said that the track condition of Pakistan Railways was very bad as despite the fact that almost 30 thousands workers have been working on repairing it, the condition still is not good. The reason for it was that the track was getting less than 10 percent of the budget for repairing.

Secretary Railways further informed the committee that the maintenance of the railway track was the responsibility of the government and due to the frequent negligence the track will soon be of no use.

Meanwhile, the convener of the committee, MNA Riaz Fatyana, directed the railways officials to start work on the downsizing within the Railways which will help to release the financial burden from the department.

He further directed the railways officials to form a strategy to improve the track of the railways for the locomotives as this sector of the department has been greatly neglected since decades.

He maintained that the department should also focus on the branch lines rather than to waste all the energy of the single route from Karachi to Peshawar.

He further said that railways was one of the departments that has more land assets than any other; suggesting that the railway should have a plan of planting trees around the track which will help the railway department to increase its revenue after some years.

On the occasion the ruling party MNA Munaza Hassan raised a question about whether there was a schedule department in the railways for maintaining a check and balance on the movements of the locomotives or not.

In his reply to the question Secretary Railways said that they were going to formulate a plan to introduce a digital system in the railway department which will help them to keep an eye on the movement of the locomotives and also will help them to get information about the numbers of the passengers in train.

He further elaborated that due to the lack of digital systems in the railway department they have not been able to get the feedback of the passengers regarding the services of the railway department.

At the end the official of the Audit department raised reservations over the performance of the railways and said that the railways in all the three main sectors including HR assets, Financial assets, and Physical assets has so far no planning which was of the reasons of its current crisis.