LAHORE: The railways department has decided to regularise all Temporary Labour Appointments (TLA) by Oct 1 after the prime minister allowed the department to decide their fate, claimed Railways Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmad here on Saturday.

Addressing a press conference, he said the TLA had been working for years in different workshops of the department and could hardly find any other jobs now. All officers concerned have been told to complete the process of regularisation within a month.

The minister also announced increase in monthly allowance of drivers of passenger trains by 20 per cent – from Rs8,000 to Rs10,000.

Talking about any new recruitments, he said it was a complicated issue for the department. “Graduates and masters degree-holders are applying for jobs requiring matriculation, and well over a million applicants applied for 4,000 jobs making the entire process difficult. It was because of this massive number of applicants that the cabinet decided to go for balloting of the candidates. All seven divisions of the department have been told to conduct transparent balloting,” he claimed.

The minister announced inauguration of Bahawalpur railways station on Sept 6 and reduction in fares of Jinnah Express plying between Karachi and Lahore by Rs500 – the new fare being Rs6,000. All the pending renovation works at Rajanpur and Dera Ghazi Khan stations would be completed soon and the stations inaugurated the next day.

He also decided to maintain two spare trains on the Karachi-Lahore section so that any train running late could be quickly replaced and passengers not affected. He lamented that Karachi rains had hit the department hard, impacting its signal system and schedules. But everything would be put back on track within 10 days, he announced.

Published in Dawn, September 1st, 2019