|
‘Pakistan can’t afford bullet trains’
 [DAWN] Pakistain cannot have bullet trains, even though this was one of the ruling party’s election promises, Khawaja Saad Rafique told the National Assembly on Tuesday."When we asked the Chinese about it, they laughed at us. We should consider the 160kmph train under CPEC as a bullet train. We can’t afford an actual bullet train, there’s no market for it," the railway minister said. Admitting that their party had faced a lot of criticism over not launching the project, he said that the country didn’t have enough money to build one. "Even if we do, we don’t have such a big range of upper and middle class passengers who will buy tickets." In an articulate speech on the floor of the house, Mr Rafique gave members a comprehensive overview of the performance of his department and insisted that he was doing as much as possible to clean up the department and turn it into a profit-making entity. Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan  ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... are not prepared to turn over railway land to the Pakistain Railways, preventing the department from using them to generate more revenue, he told the house. Posted by: Fred 2016-12-01 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=474573 |