Pakistan Railways Declares Emergency, Cancels Officers' Leave Until December

Pakistan Railways has cancelled all leave and public holidays for its officers and officials until December 31 and barred them from flying on official duty, after a run of derailments that Railways Minister Hanif Abbasi says exposed a decade of neglected maintenance.

The emergency took effect on Saturday, October 24, and will stay in place through the end of the year. Operations officers must work through weekends until the deficiencies behind recent accidents are fixed, and a letter titled "Mandatory Use of Rail Transport for Official Tours" bars officers from flying or using official vehicles on tour, with air travel allowed only for Abbasi himself and officers facing "extreme emergency." The minister said he will travel between Rawalpindi and Lahore by railcar until the deadline. "Till December 31, neither I nor the officers concerned will take rest," he said.

The record behind the order

The emergency follows the derailment of the Peshawar-bound Rehman Baba Express near Sher Shah Railway Station in Multan district on October 13, which killed five people and injured more than 40. Pakistan Railways recorded seven separate accidents or derailments in July alone, part of a pattern Abbasi has linked to tracks, rolling stock and staffing that went without proper upkeep for roughly ten years.

Abbasi has named five specific causes: deteriorating tracks, faulty or brakeless "dummy" coaches and wagons still in service, the network's manually operated point system known as the kanta system, human error, and a maintenance backlog that built up over the past decade for lack of resources.

What is meant to change by year's end

Chief engineers in the civil and mechanical departments, along with the head of the safety department, must now file daily reports to the ministry. Faulty or brakeless coaches and goods wagons are to be pulled from service by December 31, and Abbasi said that from January 2027, every coach, wagon and locomotive in operation should be fit to run.

On parts, about 36,000 brake cylinders are due to arrive, with components that can be manufactured locally to be produced at railway workshops, and demand for concrete and wooden sleepers to be met by November 30. Health inspections are complete for 1,546 coaches and wagons; the roughly 3,000 still outstanding are due to be checked by November 10.

A network already negotiating for new track

The emergency targets upkeep of the existing fleet and infrastructure rather than the bigger, slower-moving question of replacing Pakistan's oldest main line. Pakistan has separately been negotiating a proposed $1.1 billion Asian Development Bank loan to upgrade the ML-1 line between Karachi and Peshawar, the same route the Rehman Baba Express was running when it derailed. That financing, if it proceeds, would address the track itself; the measures Abbasi announced this week are aimed instead at keeping the coaches, wagons and locomotives already on it fit to run before then.

Pakistan Railways' chief executive, Muhammad Hafeezullah, had said on October 1, before the Multan derailment, that a lack of maintenance over the preceding five years was behind a string of earlier accidents on the network, a timeline Abbasi's emergency order now effectively endorses by setting a hard December 31 deadline rather than an open-ended one.

What to watch

Whether the emergency measures hold past December 31, when the current leave cancellation and inspection deadlines expire, will be the first test of whether this round of orders outlasts previous ones. Abbasi has issued safety ultimatums to Pakistan Railways before; this is the first to cancel leave network-wide and restrict officers' own travel, rather than addressing a single route or train.

Build Better Pakistan's Security Desk is tracking Pakistan Railways' safety overhaul and will update this piece as the December 31 deadlines are met or missed.