PR officials to visit China in groups to inspect passenger coaches

Gwadar Pro

Islamabad: Pakistan Railways (PR) will send officials to China in phases as small groups to inspect 230 passenger coaches that Pakistan is importing from China for an amount of US $149 million.

The PR officials are going to inspect 230 passenger coaches. Some officials will also participate in training sessions being organized by a China as part of two different contracts to transfer technology for producing modern coaches in Pakistan.

PR’s Chief Mechanical Engineer (CME) Abdul Haseeb said that under US $140 million contract awarded by Pakistan Railways, a Chinese company is liable to manufacture 230 state-of-the-art passenger coaches.

“Out of these 46 will be provided to us in the form of Completely Built Unit (CBU) and the remaining 184 will be manufactured here in Pakistan by our engineers and technical staff under the supervision of the Chinese,” he elaborated in a media interaction.

Haseeb said the contract with China of procuring 800 wagons and 20 brake wagons is separate to this contract.

The PR team which has been finalized to visit China includes Additional General Manager (AGM), Shahid Aziz; Divisional Superintendent (DS) Workshop, Rahat Mirza; Director General (DG) Planning, Abdul Malik; Managing Director (MD) Loco Factory Risalpur, Aqeel Yousuf; and Project Director Mughalpura Workshop among others.

Deputy Chief Mechanical Engineer Risalpur, Muhammad Ghufran Khan (Team Leader), and Works Manager Mughalpura, Muhammad Ismail, are among the first group of officers that will be going for the 22-day visit to China this week.

Earlier, the PR had said Pakistan Railways had procured a total of 230 modern passenger coaches from China to facilitate the passengers.

The PR Ministry mentioned that the “high power locomotives, 4,000 horsepower have been procured to enhance payload for maximising freight revenue.”

The PR informed that the process for installing Automatic Train Protection (ATP) in locomotives had been initiated and would be operational after the complete installation of Computer Based Interlocking (CBI) at 31 stations.