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LAHORE, Dec 01 (APP): Passengers of Pakistan Railways have demanded strict action against Special Ticket Examiners (STEs) after the revelation that 8,214 ticket dodgers were caught in November during raids on several trains across the country.
Daily Passengers Association Secretary Asghar Sherwani said that hundreds of passengers travel on almost every train without tickets by bribing STEs and railway police officials, yet the higher authorities fail to take any disciplinary action. “The system encourages corruption when officials on duty freely allow ticketless travel,” he added.
Earlier on Monday, Pakistan Railways released data showing that Rs 18,226,640 were recovered from ticketless passengers during widespread raids in November alone.
Sherwani also questioned why the number of ticketless passengers continues to rise despite continuous inspections.
According to railway sources, the raids were conducted under the supervision of Deputy Chief Commercial Manager (Passenger) Nasir Nazir, whose Headquarters Ticketless Checking Squad inspected trains operating on the Lahore–Sahiwal, Sahiwal–Khanewal, Lahore–Faisalabad, Faisalabad–Shorkot, and Khanewal–Multan–Rohri sections, as well as trains running in Peshawar, Karachi and Quetta.
Major trains checked included Allama Iqbal Express, Tezgam, Khyber Mail, Awam Express, Pakistan Express, Shalimar Express, Millat Express, Rehman Baba Express, Karakoram, Green Line and Hazara Express. The recovered fines were deposited into the national treasury.
Criticizing long-standing practices within the department, Sherwani said that for years railway officials have portrayed increasing “window earnings” as a sign of the commercial staff’s good performance, whereas the growing number of ticketless travelers indicates the opposite. Despite this, the system continues to count the detection of ticket dodgers as “performance” instead of addressing the root causes.
The scribe tried to contact the commercial department for its version about the criticism but it did not respond.