PR to close passenger operations

LAHORE Pakistan Railways, a victim of severe financial crunch of billions of rupees, seems set to close its passenger operations due to unavailability of the engines and their spare parts to run the trains, it is learnt. The department had 500 engines in 2009 while 100 engines had become out of order in the same year. The number of such engines has been increased upto 250 during last year and the train operation is being run by only 160. And, from which 90 are being used for freight service while only 70 engines are being used to operate the passenger service. A study conducted in 2009-10 regarding availability of the engines revealed that the main reasons behind the closure of freight operation were lack of spare parts, outdated engines, custom duty on spare parts etc. The PR will have to close its operations by July 2012 if it could not get special support package from the government, an insider told this scribe. The solution, the source said, would be either to privatize the utility or provide it with one trillion rupees.