Step motherly treatment to railways

Railway was and is a poor man’ s transport in this country atleast as well as in the adjoining India. The expenditure incurred on the transportation of the merchandise from one town to another through the railway’s goods train is also much less and economical than its transportation through other modes of transportation like trucks. Moreover, in times of emergency, the movement of the armed forces from one place to another is also facilitated by the trains.
The Britishers had left us a very good network of railways in 1947 at the time of partition. What a pity that instead of building on it, we have uprooted it altogether. It goes without saying that the big transporters owning fleets of trucks buses in this country have, over the years, developed a very strong lobby in parliament. This lobby saw to it that no step on the part of the government aimed at rehabilitation of the railways is allowed to succeed as their business could thrive only in case it faced no competition from the railways .They wanted complete domination and monopoly of road and truck transport in the communication system of the country and they certainly succeeded in it to a great extent.
A case in point is the railway track and umpteen railway stations on the Kohat-Bannu-Lakki-Tank railway line lying in a shambles since long. Nobody knows who has uprooted the railway line and in whose possession the railway stations are? The same goes for Kohat-Tal railway line which is in a state of utter neglect. It is good that the railway has started a rail service on Pindi- Kohat railway line recently but it needs to be extended to Tal. Likewise ,if the Kohat-Manzai railway track was made functional not only would it provide a cheaper transport facility to the passengers travelling to the southern districts and Waziristan, the price of consumer goods would also fall down in many parts of the country because of cheaper charges on their carriage through railways goods train instead of trucks whose transport charges are much on the higher side.