BANGLADESH Railway will hike the fare in few months as per a news report justifying the move to recover part of the annual losses now at about Tk 900 crore. But the Railway itself claim that by the proposed fare hike it would be able to collect about Tk 45 crore while the recovery of the remaining losses appear to be unknown so far. Mentionable Railway had increased fare by around 50 percent in 2012 when the annual losses were over Tk 800 crore. So what people would like to know why the losses continued to rise instead of declining even after a substantial rise in fare four years ago along with a regular rise in budgetary allocation. In that case the Railway authorities must also look at the sources of the huge losses and take steps to effectively plug them. It makes no sense to penalize passengers who are low-income people using railways as the low cost transport across the country.
We all know about the ‘black cat’, which had exposed the railways’ corruption under the previous railway minister. It showed how people from highly responsible position to the field level are exploiting the system and minting tens of crores of taka regularly misusing the railway resources like stealing furnace oil, supplies contracts at exorbitant rates and running appointment business against huge illegal payment to various positions that even do not exist in the organogram. The report quoted a senior official of the Railway ministry as saying that fuel prices have increased and new appointments soared salary liability. Railway procurements have become expensive. But reports also galore that these are the sources where the Railway is incurring heavy losses because of corruption and misuse of funds adding to annual losses. Moreover now is a time fuel oil sells at the cheapest in global market and unless funds are not misused in terms of high cost and less delivery, its cost is bound to come down.
Railway passengers have been quoted in the report as saying that despite the huge rise in railway fares in 2012, the quality of its services has not improved – goods wagons are in short supply, passengers coaches are dirty and dilapidated in many cases and shortage of Railway locomotives is a constant source of breaking of time schedules running the service behind the schedule.
It is to every body’s knowledge that railway has enough property all over the country changing hands and going to illegal occupants. Railway must recover the property instead of raising fares which a senior official of the Railway ministry suggests to be an annual event to rise fare with rising cost. In our view Railway must combat corruption at all levels and improve the quality of services. Raising fares must not be in card.
