THERE used to be 450 passenger trains and 400 goods trains per day over the system of NWR. With the connivance of transporters, important services have been cancelled.

The goods trains, which were the main source of income, have been cancelled in the name of shortage of engines and there is no goods service at all.

It is well-known that working locomotives were made unfit under a criminal conspiracy and converted into scrap. At least 345 new bogies were converted into scrap for exposing shortage of locomotives and coaches as a conspiracy.

Important train services have been gradually cancelled and the remaining mail and express trains have been converted into ‘donkey carts’, reaching in 40 hours from Rawalpindi to Karachi so that passengers may not use any train service. All this is the ‘magic’ of road transporters. Certain railway officers are working in connivance with transporters, thus working as their agents.

On June 12, the railway minister cancelled important train services namely 15-Up/16-Down (Lahore-Karachi), 33-Up/34-Down (Super Express from Sarghodha to Karachi) and six other services but there is no one to check him.

When there were 450 passenger trains and 400 goods trains there were only 200 officers.

The Pakistan Railways, now having seven divisions, one headquarters office, Lahore, Railways Board and Ministry of Railways, Islamabad, has 1,700 officers for just 76 trains.

They have proved themselves inefficient because some trains have been given in the charge of private contractors which are full of passengers and are maintaining punctuality.

I request that a campaign against the destruction of the Pakistan Railways may be launched and questions may be raised in the National Assembly and Senate in order to save this facility of the poor.

M.A. HAKEEM Sukkur