Railways reduce workload for train drivers

The Pakistan Railways is taking steps to reduce driving distances for drivers, following complaints of fatigue.

The move comes after the disastrous train collision at Ghotki, in which more than 150 people were killed.

Railway authorities have also begun recruiting more drivers to lessen the workload. An internal report had noted driver shortages contributed to long driving hours, and exhaustion, adding to the possibility of a fatal mistake being made.

As a first step, it has decided to declare Khanpur as base station on the long Khanewal-Rohri stretch to ensure safety of passengers and smooth train operations.

Main line Khanpur-Rohri section is the most vulnerable in terms of passengers' safety and train operations, the sources said, adding most of the train accidents during the last 15 years have occurred on this section.

Most of the trains pass this stretch during night while almost all the accidents in the last 15 years occurred in the wee hours.

"Human beings are generally prone to relaxing in the wee hours and the measure is being taken to ensure concentration and strict vigilance by drivers," the sources said.

They said the railway authorities had received complaints that the employees at Khanpur-Rohri section were not properly trained and needed training to improve competence, evaluation and re-training.

At present the drivers of Mail and Express trains are engaged for driving between Khanewal to Rohri and Rohri to Khanewal covering 499km in six and a half hours.

In order to reduce the stress of such a long stretch of driving, it has been proposed to divide the drivers' single beat into two sub-sections, offering a break to drivers at Khanpur station, which is almost midway, between Rohri and Khanewal.

As such the drivers starting from either Khanewal or Rohri will be replaced with fresh train crew at Khanpur.

They said staff posted at Khanpur, Rahimyar Khan, Ghotki and Rohri would be trained afresh at the Railways Walton Academy in Lahore.