About 115,000 Pakistan Railways (PR) retired employees who have not been verified have been receiving annual pensions totaling Rs35 billion, according to research by the government-funded Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), a think tank housed within the Planning Commission.
It revealed in a statement yesterday that between 2015 and 2020, Pakistan Railways lost Rs144 billion. A deficit of Rs44 billion in 2020, which includes Rs36 billion for the pensions of 120,000 PR employees, is included in the losses, according to Dawn.
According to the PIDE report, the PR also received a subsidy from the government in 2020 worth Rs45 billion to make up for these losses.
Due to the intense competition from the road transportation industry and PR’s inability to implement a customer-centric business strategy due to a complicated bureaucratic structure, the public agency has been inefficient, underfunded, and overstaffed for the past 35 years, making losses.
The study also noted that 115,000 unverified PR retirees receive an annual pension of Rs35 billion. To solve the problem, a biometric verification system to confirm the pensioners in question has been proposed.
A Pay and Pension Commission (PPC) has also been established in this respect, and it will take into account issues pertaining to the railways and other public organizations.
