Karachi: The federal government has announced its decision to retrieve a chunk of land belonging to the Pakistan Railways (PR) in Karachi, a news source reported. To this effect, Minister for Railways Sheikh Rasheed has stated that this effort aims to generate additional revenue for the department.
The minister revealed this information during a press
conference held at the Cantt Station on Sunday. He stated that the PR owned 38
kanals of land in Karachi. He added that an additional five kanals of land
would be vacated from illegal occupants.
Rasheed said that Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan would take the final decision about the use of the retrieved land. On the other hand, the minister also discussed the issue of the Karachi Circular Railway (KCR) project. He stressed that the federal government wished to completely cooperate with the provincial government on this front.
Indicating that the PM would fix the rate of the KCR land,
Rasheed said that the centre would hand over any KCR land if the Sindh government
demanded, since the project belonged to the latter.
Meanwhile, the minister revealed that some of the major decisions by PR included upgrading railway workshops in Hyderabad. He added that this initiative would allow the workshops to carry out repairs; enhancing the railway services. He said that they would also set up a railways university in Sindh as part of the ML-1 project – creating thousands of jobs for the locals.
Rasheed revealed that the PR would launch the ‘Geeta Afghan
Trade Train’ in the second half of February. He added that this service would transport
goods from Karachi to Chaman and Azkhel in Afghanistan; allowing the department
to curb smuggling of tradable commodities.
