RAWALPINDI: Federal Minister for Railways Sheikh Rasheed on Monday admitted that there was surge in inflation and unemployment as well as lack of good governance in the country.

On Tezgam train tragedy, Sheikh Rasheed said he believed that the tragedies that took place were because of negligence of railways staff. “And because of their negligence, how much effort I put into goes wasted.”

On the Karachi Circular Railway (KCR), the federal minister said 38 km land along the railway track had been vacated which had more than 1000 houses. “We are (now) ready to hand over the Karachi Circular Railway project to the Sindh government,” he said.

He said ML-1 will be completed by March this year which will cut short the distance between Karachi and Rawalpindi to eight hours only. ML-1’s financial report will be completed in one month, he maintained.

Sheikh Rasheed said tender for the new express will be opened in next 15 days and its price had soared to 80 billion rupees.

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To a query, he said all the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leaders were on plea bargain except for Khursheed Shah.

He also said that Rawalpindi would be the only city in Pakistan where there would be four public universities.

On behalf of the government, the federal minister for railways had announced 1.5 million rupees compensation for families of each person who died and 0.5 million rupees for each of the injured in horrific train fire incident in Rahim Yar Khan.

Contrary to statements of eyewitnesses, the railways minister had claimed that the fire broke out after gas cylinder, of a group of people who were preparing breakfast, exploded. While, the eyewitnesses had said that the fire sparked because of short-circuit in wires of the train. They had said the cylinder was still intact even after the incident had happened.