Travelling by Train and Air become nightmare for Pakistanis
Pakistan is a large country where the distance of two biggest cities Karachi and Lahore is about 1300 km with around 14 hours journey by road. This distance extends when you plan a trip from capital city Islamabad to the provincial capital Karachi to meet your relatives.
People, around the world prefer to book trains for long travels as it is comfortable to bear the tiredness of long travel on train. Also you have other facilities on board such as restrooms and kitchens. Train travel is also cheaper than using road transport. Another way to travel a long distance is to choose any reasonable airline to cut the travelling time, if you can afford so. So is the same case for Pakistanis but with a difference.
What is a misfortune for Pakistani people, that both air travel and train journey has become a nightmare for Pakistanis in recent years because of frequent and massive train and air crashes, losing dozens of innocent lives. People of Pakistan are left on the edge of fire due to mismanagement, blame game and disinterest of governments. Every new accident causing lots of deaths and injured people set the administration and political leaders in a blame game. The politicians start airing their dirty laudary in public after any train or air accident and no serious effort is made to save the live of innocent people has worsoned the situation.
A recent train accident happened on 7th June, 2021 in Gothki Sindh when two express trains collide with each other. There are 63 casualties and more than 150 injured people in the accident. The accident happened late night on about 3:45 am when most of passengers were sleeping fast. Trains were going and coming from Karachi towards Punjab. Many families were hoping to meet their relatives at the end of journey had to meet their unfortunate fate because of incompetent and apethatic governments. The accident occurred due to multiple reasons: old train boogies, disrepair train tracks, out of order signal system, corruption and many more. Ministers, apathically, put blame on the previous governments instead of announcing any new investment or planning in Pakistan Railways.
We still couldn't forget the 97 innocent lives, we lost in a plane crash just 1 year before on 22nd May, 2021, when PIA plane crashed on the residential area near the airport. Many people including top female model died in the accident.
Another PIA accident on 7 December, 2016 lost 48 passengers including Pakistani icon scholar and singer Junaid Jamshed.
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| Junaid Jamshed, A renowned Pakistani scholar died in a plane crash of PIA |
The air blue plane that crashed in Islamabad killed 152 passengers in 2012. These are a few major accidents out of frequent small mishandling of planes and risking the passengers lives.
The people of Pakistan also have remembered the terrible sights of two train carts burning with fire and roasting the passengers in when fire exploded in a moving train in October 2019. At least 70 people were died in the accident and the blame was threw on the passengers causing the accident.
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| A moving train set on blaze because of short circuit |
It is not only the Pakistan railway system that have been plagued with problems but Pakistan air travel is equally unsafe and unreliable for passengers. Almost all top airlines in Pakistan including PIA, air blue, Shaheen, Bohja, have gone through major crashes in a decade.
Every Pakistani thinks 100 times before booking the ticket from Punjab to Sindh or vice versa.
Let us just give you a fear of common Pakistani woman who had to travel from Lahore to Karachi. Ayesha had to visit Karachi from Lahore to attend an important family event. First, she clearly refused to travel on train because of its accident history. Then she asked her husband to look for any Pakistani airline that is not gone through any accident Unfortunately, there was not any. At the end, she had to took a risk of her life by choosing a better air travel plan.
Accidents do happen and can happen at any time at any place. The real matter is to deal with the reason of accident and to make sure the safety of people. In Pakistan, one minister's non serious statement about Pakistani pilots caused the ban for Pakistani airline from The European Union's aviation safety agency. The European safety agency has extended a ban imposed on Pakistan's state-run airline PIA this year and Pakistan had to loss 7 billion pkr in terms of revenue from state airline. Anyone can think of the seriousness of our governments for the betterment of state run organizations.
If we talk about the reforms in Pakistan railway, then everyone says ML 1 is the solution of every problem in railway. ML 1 is a project of Rehabilitation & Up-gradation of Karachi-Lahore Peshawar (ML-1) Railway Track that is about 1,872 kms long. The entire track from Karachi to Peshawar will be doubled. Speed of passenger trains to be raise from 65/110 km/h to 160 km/h. Freight trains to operate at 120 km/h is a project that is in pipeline for more than 3 years under CPEC.
Pakistani people seem to set behind "truck ki batti" as till date, as a common Pakistan resident, we have not seen a glimpse of any train track that is under construction under ML 1. There has not been announced any final date for the inauguration of the project. We have not seen any upgradation or even a news about upgradation under process since now.
Every Pakistani rich or poor is equally afraid of travelling by air or by train in Pakistan. There are also problems in the travelling by road but it seems safer than the above two travel choices.
After any big air crash or train accident, Pakistani people have no hope for betterment and seriousness from the government.