Skip to main content

PM inaugurates Lahore-Karachi Jinnah Express

LAHORE: Prime Minister Imran Khan inaugurated Lahore-Karachi train Jinnah Express on Saturday, pledging to improve and revamp the country’s creaking railways network with the help of China.

“Since rail transport is an economical source of travelling for the public, it needs to be promoted as well as modernised. We will seek help from China that has introduced state-of-the-art rail network in the world,” he said at the inaugural ceremony.

PM Khan announced his plans to travel to China next month “to request them to help us in upgrading our railways”.

Speaking on tourism, PM Khan’s preferred subject these days especially after recently announcing his PTI-led government’s ambitious new tourism policy, he said he would undertake wide-ranging efforts to promote trains for local and international tourists. “Pakistan is the most beautiful country in the world with several attractions for tourists. I assure you we will promote tourism and Pakistan Railways unlike the previous rulers.”

Plans to visit China next month to seek their expertise in revamping railways

He was also of the view that travelling by trains will substantially reduce traffic congestion on the country’s overburdened road network since “a large number of people prefer travelling via this mode of transportation”.

“So we must make railways our top priority, enabling more and more people to use this mode instead of travelling on roads.”

He also mentioned salaries of railway workers in his speech saying he was convinced they need to be raised, “but before making any promises, I would need to first consult the finance ministry about the availability of funds. If they have funds, we will raise salaries”, he said.

Health cards, too, were needed for railway workers but again it was linked to the availability of funds, he said.

The PM also promised to direct the petroleum minister to use trains to transport oil instead of tankers. “I would discourage the oil tankers ‘mafia’ by ordering the minister to use railways for oil transportation.”

Speaking on the occasion, Minister for Railways Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said the rail administration was working hard to make railways cost-effective and the best travelling mode for the public.

Jinnah Express during its journey would reportedly stop at three railway stations — Khanewal, Rohri and Hyderabad.

The capacity of Jinnah Express is approximately 650 passengers with single fare for each passenger fixed at Rs6,500.

Catering facilities and sleeping berths will also be offered to the travellers of Jinnah Express that will complete its journey in 16 hours.

Published in Dawn, March 31st, 2019



from The Dawn News - Home https://ift.tt/2CLDdCt
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Trump says he urged team to ‘slow’ COVID-19 testing

US President Donald Trump said Saturday he was encouraging health officials in his administration to slow down coronavirus testing, arguing that increased tests lead to more cases being discovered. The president has claimed falsely on several occasions that surges of COVID-19 in several states can be explained by greater numbers of diagnostic tests. At his first rally since the outbreak forced nationwide shutdowns in March, Trump told the crowd in Tulsa, Oklahoma that testing was a “double-edged sword.” The United States — which has more deaths and cases than any other country — has carried out more than 25 million coronavirus tests, placing it outside the top 20 countries in the world, per capita. “Here is the bad part: When you do testing to that extent, you are going to find more people, you will find more cases,” Trump argued. “So I said to my people ‘slow the testing down.’ They test and they test.” It was not clear from Trump’s tone if he was playing to the crowd, who ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sir Anwer Pervez, richest Pakistani British businessman, loses £432m in pandemic

Sir Anwar Pervez OBE, the founder and chairman of Bestway Cash & Carry has lost £432 million during the coronavirus pandemic to bring him down to No 50 on the richest British people list. The list has 1,000 people and is published by the Sunday Times newspaper . Pervez was at No 42 previously.  The 2020 list of the UK’s richest shows its first fall in wealth in a decade as Britain’s wealthiest people lost tens of billions of pounds in the coronavirus pandemic, the Sunday Times reported in its Rich List 2020. The newspaper, which has produced the respected annual ranking of the country’s 1,000 wealthiest people since 1989, found the past two months had resulted in the super-rich losing £54 billion ($65 billion). More than half of the billionaires in Britain had seen drops in their worth by as much as £6b, a decrease in their collective wealth unprecedented since 2009 and the financial crisis. The Hinduja brothers, who topped last year’s list with a £22b fortune, saw among ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Despite reservations about jury, Pakistan to implement FATF reforms: envoy

WASHINGTON: Despite its reservations about the fairness of the jury which is to determine Pakistan’s performance against terror financing, the government is committed to implementing its action plan for dealing with this issue, says Islamabad’s Washington envoy Asad Majeed Khan. In a conversation with a prominent US scholar George Perkovich, recorded at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington on Monday afternoon, Ambassador Khan said the actions that Pakistan had taken so far to eliminate terror financing were “reflective of the political will”. “We feel that we have done a lot. We are also clear and determined to do more,” said the envoy while responding to a question about a meeting of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) held in Orlando last week, which asked Pakistan to implement its own action plan for eliminating terror financing by October. Failing to do so could put Pakistan on a blacklist of violators and bring strict economic sanctions too. “But we w...
Post a Comment
Read more