Railways’ deficit increases to Rs46b during 2020

LAHORE : Pakistan Railways' deficit has increased from Rs 35 billion to Rs 46 billion.

According to the annual report of the railway department, the railway deficit has increased by about Rs. 11 billion during the year 2020. According to the report, the total number of railway employees is 67,627 but during the last financial year, Rs 28.21 billion were spent on salaries of these employees while Rs 31.41 billion were spent on pensions for retired employees.

The report revealed that the number of locomotives decreased from 478 to 472, passenger coaches fell from 1,460 to 1,378 while freight coaches fell from 16,159 to 14,327.

Fire Rescue Service PERFORMANCES in 2020: Fire Rescue Service responded to 15,590 fire emergencies and saved estimated loss worth Rs 58 billion due to timely response and professional firefighting across Punjab in 2020.

This was informed during annual performance review meeting of Fire Emergency Response held at Rescue Headquarters here Wednesday and chaired by the DG Punjab Emergency Service.

The fire emergencies’ review highlighted that Fire Rescue Service is managing an average 43 fire incidents daily in Punjab and short circuits, negligence and carelessness have become leading causes of fire emergencies. DG emphasised on implementation of Building Code of Pakistan – Fire Safety Provisions - 2016 to reduce the risk of fire incidents. During the meeting, Head of Operations presented yearly report of fire emergencies which showed that 79 people died in 15,590 fire incidents in Punjab in 2020. Compared to 2019 there has been a decrease of 2,789 fire emergencies in the number of fire emergencies.

The data revealed that the causes of fire emergencies which included 7,348 fire emergencies due to short circuiting, 1,009 owing to gas leakage, 3,201 due to carelessness/ smoking, 41 due to candle burning, 103 due to LPG cylinders blast, 139 due to kitchen fire, 136 due to forest fire, 1,129 due to unknown reasons and 2,484 fire incidents occurred due to other multiple reasons. According to the official statistics, the majority of fire incidents occurred in major districts which include 3,460 incidents in Lahore, 1,531 in Faisalabad, 1,115 in Rawalpindi and 914 in Multan.

LGH’: Principal Post Graduate Medical Institute Prof Dr Sardar Muhammad Al-freed Zafar has released the annual report of the Lahore General Hospital (LGH) for the year 2020 on Wednesday.

According to report, the induction of Smart Management System has significantly increased efficiency and performance of the hospital by providing quality healthcare to patients and the measures taken for the welfare of the employees are a matter of distinction as the funds provided by the Punjab Govt are being spent on the treatment and welfare of the patients with utmost honesty.

“During the current corona situation the doctors, nurses and paramedics are treated all the patients without any fear,” he said while expressing his satisfaction on the annual performance report of LGH. On this occasion, MS LGH Dr Abdul Razzaq, Dr Laila Shafiq, Dr Sonia Ayoub, Dr Abdul Aziz and other doctors were also present. Prof Al-freed Zafar said that a total of 1508397 patients visited Emergency and Outdoor Department last year to whom all medical and diagnostic facilities have been provided as per the policy of Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar and Provincial Health Minister Dr Yasmeen Rashid.

Principal LGH further said that during this period, 704273 patients in the Emergency were given free medicines, operating equipment, diagnostic facilities and CT Scans. He said during the last 12 months, 63079 different types of operations were performed and 59940 patients were admitted to the hospital for treatment.