PR owns land worth billions of rupees, NA told

[Lahore_Real_Estate]

ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly was informed on Friday that a loss-making Pakistan Railways owned 167,690 acres of land worth several hundred billions of rupees.

In a written reply to a question raised by Ms Saira Afzal Tarar of PML-N, Federal Minister for Railways Haji Ghulam Ahmed Bilour informed the house that 90,326 acres of the PR land was in Punjab, 39,423 acres in Sindh, 26,228 acres in Balochistan and 9,708 acres in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The minister said that after he took over the charge, his ministry had not sold even a single acre of land, but leased out 15.55 acres of property in various places.

The PR has been facing a serious economic crisis for several years as a result of which it has been forced to defer long overdue maintenance of its aging assets which has badly affected its operations.

The PR recently stopped running trains on seven popular routes after its losses crossed Rs50 billion. The move led to severe criticism.

In response to a supplementary question, Mr Bilour said that in 2002 the previous government had bought 69 Chinese locomotives, of which 42 were lying idle because of unavailability of spare parts.

At that time, the government didn’t include provision of supplying spare parts in the agreement.

He said that locomotives of American make were of much better quality, but their price was double that of the Chinese locomotives.

In reply to a question about the delay in the Karachi railway project, the minister claimed that differences between federal and provincial governments were to be blamed for that.

He said that Rs11 billion bailout package recently approved by the federal government would make operational the locomotives lying unused.

A senior PR official who did not want to be named said that the land owned by the organisation was an unexplored treasure which with a little bit of honest efforts could make it a profit-earning entity.

Referring to a report prepared 2002-03, he said that the land at that time was valued at Rs246 billion, but governments, largely out of their political expediencies, didn’t want to address the issue of the land by mafias which were supported by politicians and a controversy between federal and provincial governments over its ownership.

The official said that a fresh assessment of Pakistan Railways assets was currently under way. He said the railways suffered from more than one ailment and needed immediate government attention.

In October this year, a 20-member inquiry committee headed by Nadeem Afzal Gondal of PPP presented a report on the Golf Club scam which revealed a number of financial and administrative irregularities.

According to the report, 141 acres of land was allotted at a nominal price, and the national exchequer lost Rs4.82 billion when the land utilisation charge was reduced from Rs52.43 to Rs4 per square yard.

The committee recommended registration of criminal cases against the then top PR management headed by Lt-Gen (retd) Javed Ashraf Qazi, but no action has been taken so far.