Railway’s earning increases by 55pc

After witnessing a massive shortfall in revenue because of the pandemic, Bangladesh Railway's eastern zone has improved its position in the 2021-22 fiscal year.

It has earned a total revenue of Tk 493.75 crore in 2021-22 against the Tk 318.22 crore during the previous fiscal year, thus registering a 55 percent rise. It carried more than 34.37 crore passengers during 2021-22.

Nazmul Islam, chief commercial manager of the BR (east zone), told The Daily Star, "Passengers can reach their destination faster than before... The ticketing process has also been simplified. Intercity train tickets are being sold online, so passengers can book tickets from the comfort of their homes. Apart from this, tickets (forwarding tickets) for all destinations of intercity trains have been opened at all stations."

He claimed, "Passengers are flocking to railways because of overall improvement in service quality, and thus revenue is increasing."

Earlier, passenger services were badly hit during the lockdown. Amid the pandemic, the number of railway passengers decreased in the 2020-21 fiscal year.

Whatever BR generated revenue during the lockdown was mostly from freight services. The amount of goods carried by freight trains rose by 71.39 percent during the pandemic, sources said.

However, despite the growth of railways, the state-owned institution is still incurring huge losses allegedly due to poor services, corruption, and a lack of proper management of assets.

It posted a Tk 1,384 crore losses for the 2020-21 fiscal year, shows a railways ministry document.

The railway continued the poor show although the government is providing it with increased funding both for operation and development budgets.

Around 5,000 acres of railway land was grabbed by illegal occupants. If the land can be recovered and used for commercial purposes, railway can earn crores of taka, but there are no serious attempts to recover the land.

Mentionable, the BR has been receiving investments since 2009.

Md Mozammel Haque Chowdhury, secretary general of Bangladesh Passengers Welfare Association, said, "Corruption and ticket scalping have not stopped yet in the railway sector. Revenue should have increased further since railway was made a separate ministry. But the revenue growth in the passenger sector is not promising. The Ministry of Railways should focus on increasing revenue to reduce the burden of losses."

Jahangir Hossain, general manager of BR (eastern zone), said they are trying to make the railway profitable amid the crisis.

The railway now operates 394 passenger and freight trains on its 3,093km network across the country.