ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Railways and district administrations of Sindh, Balochistan have utilized all available resources to restore the rail service in flood affected across the country.
“On the direction of Minister for Railways Khawaja Saad Rafique, the department is putting maximum efforts for rehabilitation of railway track in Sindh, Balochistan and other affected parts of the country shortly,” an official in the Ministry told APP on Sunday.
He said that Pakistan Railways was also directed to complete the ongoing survey of the affected installations on a war footing and speed up the rehabilitation process.
The official said that the technical and non-technical staff of the department was working in three shifts to restore the tracks once the flood water recedes.
“The train service between Quetta and Karachi Divisions is suspended after railway bridges collapsed and rail tracks became submerged in water due to floods in the region,” he added.
He said that in the remaining divisions, around seven to eight bridges were damaged due to which the train operations were suspended in the flood hit areas. The official said the train service could not be restored until the bridges and tracks were cleared of the floodwater.
The official said the flooding situation as result of non-stop rains in the country had caused a loss of more than Rs 11 billion to the Pakistan Railways, including infrastructure damages worth Rs 8 billion due to collapse of the bridges and tracks, while ticket refunds, diesel and suspension of train operations had cost the department Rs 3.5 billion.
The department has deployed technical bridge staff at various sections for the repair of the damaged bridges and the train operation will only be restored after completion of repairing and onstruction work on the bridges, he told.
