ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Monday urged China to help restore a mass transit rail network in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, which lies defunct for the last two decades.
Commissioned in 1964, the Karachi Circular Railway (KCR) was originally designed to help Pakistan Railways employees by facilitating their movement between their workplaces and residences in the city’s eastern neighborhoods.
The service remained popular until 1984 when the number of trains reduced, though it was the lack of maintenance and repair, along with a gap between expenditure and revenue, which led to its closure in 1999.
Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan did the ground breaking ceremony for the project’s revival last September, nearly a year after former railways minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed partially reactivated it but could not make it fully functional.
“This project of KCR, which is very vital to the people of Karachi, it will transport hundreds of thousands of commuters every day,” PM Sharif said.
“I would avail of this opportunity.... kindly convey my request to Beijing, NDRC (National Development and Reform Commission) and our great leader President Xi to reconsider KCR for Karachi as this would bring great dividends,” he told the Chinese chargé d’affaires at the inauguration of a metro bus circuit in Islamabad.
The 25.6-kilometer bus route, from Peshawar More to Islamabad International Airport, would benefit an estimated 50,000 commuters on a daily basis.
PM Sharif regretted that the route plan of Islamabad was abruptly reduced to cut the cost from Rs16 billion to Rs12 billion, which he said caused immense loss to the materialization of the project.
He said 15 buses would be taken from Punjab Mass Transit Authority, Rawalpindi for an interim period till the new fleet was added to the Islamabad metro service.