Railways officers trained as part of capacity building

By Abdul Qadir Qureshi

(Pakistan News & Features Services)

Capacity building of its human resource has become a priority with Pakistan Railways these days. Under its approved Triple Helix Model Project, Pakistan Railway has gone into an understanding with Pak Austria Fachhochshule-Institute of Applied Sciences and Technology at Mang, Haripur, to impart training to its officers of different disciplines including engineers from mechanical, civil, electrical, and signal and telecom engineering and also from stores, medical, traffic and commercial departments. 

A one week training course ‘An introduction to Rail Transport Economics and Financial Sustainability of Train Operations’ has already been organized at the Center of Excellence in Railway Engineering at PAF-IAST today. 

Speaking at the certificate distribution ceremony, Nisar Memon, CEO/Senior GM, Pakistan Railways, observed that such training courses conducted by professionals and experts at the modern teaching facilities of the institute would go a long way in bringing about a positive change in current ailing financial position of Pakistan Railways. There were a total of 15 participants who successfully completed the course. 

Earlier, Ishfaq Khattak, Advisor, Center of Excellence in Railway Engineering, explained the importance of such focused training course and reckoned that the relationship between PAF-IAST and Pakistan Railways would definitely grow in times to come. 

He said that the train operations were the bread and butter of railways and to understand the financial of trains was essentially required by every railway officer irrespective of discipline. 

Ishfaq Khattak, an experienced railway expert, added that the Center would be starting an MS Degree Program in ‘Railway Systems Engineering’ from fall semester this year. This would be in collaboration with Beijing Jiatong University, China, and the students would be given the option of getting dual degrees from PAF-IAST and Beijing University. In this regard, a MOU and an agreement has already been signed between the two universities. 

Dr Muhammad Mujahid, Acting Rector, while explaining the concept behind Pak Austria Fachhochschule said that the engineering studies at the Institute stress on skill development along with classroom and laboratory studies. He shared that they were under obligation to follow the Austrian Fachhochschule model being followed in their engineering university. 

The ceremony ended with distribution of certificates by Nisar Memon amongst the 15 participants, who were mostly from Karachi, Sukkur and Quetta divisions and from Ministry of Railways at Islamabad. The next course is expected to commence after a week’s gap.