President to launch Karachi-Dhabeji rail shuttle service today

President Dr Arif Alvi will inaugurate the Karachi-Dhabeji railway shuttle service today. Speaking at a press conference here on Tuesday, Federal Railways Minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmad said the shuttle service would be a gift from the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan for the labourers of the city.

He said that with the launch of the train facility, labourers in Karachi would no more be required to commute on roofs of public buses on a daily basis. The labourers would be given the facility to purchase a monthly pass to avail the Karachi-Dhabeji rail service.

Ahmad said he was ready to fulfil the responsibility, whenever assigned to him, for launching the Karachi Circular Railway project. He pointed out that the Wi-Fi facility had been provided at the divisional-level railway stations in the country. He advised the people of Multan and Khanewal not to visit the railway stations of their cities just to avail the free Wi-Fi service.

The railways minister said that he had been working to fulfil the promise of launching 10 new train services in the country within the first 100 days of the new federal government. He announced that very soon the Hyderabad Express rail service in Sindh and the Rehman Baba rail service in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa would be launched. Similarly, he said, a railway service would be launched between Sukkur and Karachi.

The minister said he had plans to build a railway station at Gwadar and start a train service between Quetta and Gwadar. He said the railway service would serve as the backbone of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project. He said another project was being implemented to upgrade the speed of train service in the country.