Sh Rashid to inspect KCR coaches today

ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Railways Sheikh Rashid Ahmed will visit Railway Carriage Factory Islamabad today (Monday) where he will inspect manufacturing of Karachi Circular Railway (KCR) coaches.
According to details, Sheikh Rashid will also address the workers working in the carriage factory. The railways’ spokesperson said the minister would hold a press conference during the carriage factory visit.
In a major development, the federal and Sindh governments a day earlier agreed to run local trains on a 12-kilometer track in Karachi on a trial basis in the next two months. The understanding came during a meeting between Sindh Chief Minister Sindh Murad Ali Shah and Federal Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar in Karachi.
Earlier, chairing a meeting about Karachi Circular Railways on Saturday, the Sindh chief minister said that all the encroachments have been removed from the track of Karachi Circular Railways except those established on a five-kilometre area. He added that remaining encroachments are due to be cleared for the complete revival of an approximately 43-kilometre-long track.
The chief minister said that KCR had been included in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project over his request by the then prime minister in 2016 as “12-kilometre-long portion of KCR track was overlapping with ML-1.”
CM Shah said, “The project was approved by the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) in 2017 with the cost of $207.6 billion. KCR route is 43.13-kilometre-long including 14.95-kilometre at grade and 28.18-kilometre elevated with 24 railway stations to provide high capacity services to 550,000 passengers on a daily basis.”
During the session, the secretary railway briefed the chief minister that KCR routes will be revived in line with its allotment plan within the next six months, besides the continuation of development work for meeting its requirements on modern lines.
KCR project had been launched in 1964 and it remained fully functional till 1984 while it was halted in 1999. The Sindh government had taken initiative for the revival of KCR in 2006. The estimated cost of the KCR project was $2.6 billion at that time; however, JAICA dissociated from the project after the feasibility process in 2012. – TLTP