LAHORE: Federal Minister for Railways Hanif Abbasi said on Wednesday that \u201chuman error and some mechanical issues\u201d were most probably the reasons behind the derailment of the Karachi-bound Tezgam express train the day before.<\/p>\n
Twenty-six passengers were injured, including one critically, when seven coaches of the train derailed near Adam Wahan Railway Station near Punjab\u2019s Lodhran on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can not confirm before time \u2026 the reasons behind this derailment. But most probably, the reasons seem related to mechanical and human error,\u201d Abbasi said while talking to Dawn on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know they (Pakistan Railways) have very old coaches to run. And they have not addressed such issues well,\u201d he deplored, adding that for the last nine years, there was no proper maintenance of the locomotives.<\/p>\n
He said that 1960 model coaches are still in use by railways, \u201cand we are currently refurbishing them one by one \u2014 not to the extent of paint work alone, but mechanical and other works too\u201d.<\/p>\n
The minister said the rakes of the Sukkur Express and Awam Express would soon be refurbished as work was underway in this regard.<\/p>\n
Abbasi further added that the railways and provincial departments performed an excellent joint rescue and relief operation at the incident site.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank God there was no casualty or serious injuries to any passenger due to timely relief and rescue works,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the train was later dispatched to Karachi in a five-coach configuration.<\/p>\n
\u201cI took a five-coach train to Sammasatta Station. There, the train continued to Karachi under another driver,\u201d said train driver Tariq Khan. Responding to a question, he said he immediately realised the coaches had separated when he noticed a drop in load while operating the train.<\/p>\n
A Pakistan Railways spokesperson on Tuesday did not reveal the cause of the derailment, saying that the reasons would be ascertained after an inquiry that has been ordered by railway officials.<\/p>\n
However, some eyewitnesses claimed that the derailment was caused when the couplers between the bogies broke, dividing the train into two parts. Seven bogies were left attached to the engine, out of which five were derailed.<\/p>\n
Pakistan Railways Divisional Superintendent Multan Muhammad Hanif Gul announced strict action against the railway officials found negligent in the incident.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LAHORE: Federal Minister for Railways Hanif Abbasi said on Wednesday that \u201chuman error and some mechanical issues\u201d were most probably the reasons behind the derailment of the Karachi-bound Tezgam express train the day before. Twenty-six passengers were injured, including one critically, when seven coaches of the train derailed near Adam Wahan Railway Station near Punjab\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17087,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pakistan-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17086"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17088,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17086\/revisions\/17088"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}