ISLAMABAD: The legislative body of the Lower House of Parliament on Friday was informed that various defence departments occupied 251acres of Railways land illegally in different parts of the country, and negotiations were in progress to retrieve it.
Apart from defence departments, other government departments and provincial departments also occupied hundreds of acres of Railways land. The Punjab province tops the list where 2,170 acres of land is under encroachment, followed by Sindh with 1,189 acres, Balochistan with 619 acres and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with 251 acres. The total number of PR occupied/encroached land was 4,229 acres. These figures were presented by the Railways officials while briefing the National Assembly Standing committee Railways which met with Syed Naveed Qamar in the chair here at Parliament House.
The committee was informed that over 4,229 acres of Railways land was occupied, which in monetary terms equates Rs 92.78 billion. Railways officials admitted that a major portion of the encroached land has been in the two provinces. However, Balochistan was on top of the list with respect to value (Rs50.9 billion), followed by Punjab (Rs22.58 billion), Sindh (Rs11.5 billion) and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (Rs7.7 billion).
Secretary Parveen Agha, Additional General Manager Humayun Rasheed, Director Land and Property Arshad Salam Khattak and Director General Technical Syed Munawar Shah briefed the committee members. Giving a briefing to the committee on steps taken by the Ministry of Railways for the retrieval of Pakistan Railways’ land from illegal occupants, Director Land and Property stated that 3,550 acres of Pakistan Railways’ land has been retrieved from illegal occupants since January 2012.
The committee was informed that Railways had a total of 167,690 acres land including 90,326 acres in Punjab, 39,428 acres in Sindh, 28,228 acres in Balochistan and 9,707 acres in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The committee was further informed that the Railways Ministry approached the Supreme Court of Pakistan against three provinces for not transferring the organisation land title into its favour.
The committee was also given a briefing on recent Railways accidents. It was informed that the 60% of the accidents were caused due to unmanned level crossing, unauthorised Railways crossing and manned level crossing. In order to ensure the safety of trains operations, Pakistan Railways had conducted a joint venture surveys to upgrade existing unmanned level crossings in collaboration with Provincial and Local District Governments. The Committee recommended that proper steps be taken by the Ministry to avoid these types of incidents in future.
It was further revealed that 52 million passengers travel via rail every year, approximately 142465 passengers daily. In the last 69 years over 6.2 billion passengers traveled with Pakistan Railways. Casualties represented less than 0.00023 percent among them. Hence, it was very important to stress that the risk of any danger to passengers using trains was statistically extremely low, while efforts were being made to improve safety all the time. During the last 11 years, 129 people were killed in different accidents while 9,265 were injured. The committee was further informed that there were 1,610 unmanned level crossings including 1,147 on branch line and 463 mainline.
The committee was further informed that upgrade work of Mainline (ML-1) has been included in the early harvest projects in the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The Committee also decided to constitute a Sub-Committee under the convenership of MNA Ramesh Lal to examine the encroachment of Railways’ land in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Sardar Muhammad Irfan Dogar, Rasheed Ahmad Khan, Phyllis Azeem, Ramesh Lal, Engr. Hamid-ul-Haq Khalil, and Naseema Hafeez Panezai attended the meeting, looking for the most suitable way to reconcile this extremely grave matter.
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