Sindhi press 17
Reasons behind railway accidents
Ibrat
The railway accidents taking place after every two or three months expose the claims of ministry of Pakistan Railways about its performance and modernising this system. Earlier we have a fewer accidents. The railway ministry has launched a number of trains on the main track which is about century old. Just increasing number of trains can not be termed modernisation. If responsible railway officials have a chance to travel through these trains, they would be able to have first hand information about the facilities really availed by the common man. Passengers are loaded like animals in these trains. The infra structure is also dilapidated. After Britain we have made no investment on infra structure, but added some bogies and trains. Hence the track which was laid about one century back was on last legs.
In past trains were supposed to be safer, cheaper and comfortable means of travelling as compared to the road transport. But now these facilities are no more characteristics of the railways. We have frequent, more and dangerous railway accidents
There might be different reasons for this growing number of accidents, but negligence of the railway ministry and weaker infra structure would be the common factor of the accidents. We have still very old kerosene oil lighting system at railway stations. The changes which are claimed are cosmetic.
It is regrettable that the railway authorities did not release the lists of deceased of Karachi Express which met an unfortunate accident last week near Naushero Feroze as yet.
It is believed that the failure of railway system is an engineered one and a preparation for its privatisation. After continuous negligence the government will have strong excuse to sell out this national asset on throw away price. – (Dec 20)

A cruel joke with unemployed youth
Koshish
A cruel joke is played with unemployed youth of Sindh. PML-Q and its allies at the end of their tenure issued thousands of offers letters of primary teachers. Most of these letters were given through the PML-Q candidates to win the elections. When these youths reported at concerned officers for joining, they were refused on one or the other pretext. Now it is learnt that secretary education has verbally instructed the EDOs education not to give them joining as these orders were issued without fulfilling the requirements.

PML government had earlier also played such cruel joke. A number of youths was issued teachers appointment letter, but later, due to dispute raised over quota among the ruling partners these appointments were cancelled. So the PML-Q tenure ended but youth of Sindh did not get the job.
Sindh has a higher ratio of unemployment as compared with the other provinces. The main reason behind it is that Sindh did not have representative government since a long time. The other reason is that there was inflow and pressure of people of other provinces, who try to find job and livelihood resources in Sindh.
Karachi having a large number of jobs in private sector, but here hardly 20 per cent people from Sindh are employed. It is accepted rule that people of the area have got first right over the resources. But in Sindh we have quite different situation. People of Sindh are not getting their due share in the federal jobs also.
It is irony that thousands of youths were cheated by issuing fake orders. We would demand a thorough probe in to the issue and expose those people involved in the scandal. – (Dec 20)

Selected and translated by by Sohail Sangi