Pakistan Railways bars officials from air travel in austerity drive

Pakistan Railways has barred its officials from air travel and directed them to use trains for official tours, part of the government's austerity measures, according to a notification reported by ProPakistani.

The notification states that no funds will be paid to officials under the air travel allowance, and that the use of government vehicles for official travel has also been prohibited. The report did not say how the restriction will be enforced, whether any category of official will be exempt, or how much the department expects to save.

Separately, Pakistan Railways has declared an emergency across the department to improve train safety on the instructions of Railways Minister Hanif Abbasi. Under the order, leave for all field officers has been cancelled for three months, and officers have been directed to monitor train operations on Sundays as well.

The Civil and Mechanical Chief Engineers and the Head of Safety must submit daily reports to the ministry. The emergency will remain in effect until December 31, 2026.

Abbasi said the government was committed to ensuring safe journeys for passengers, according to the report. The report did not specify what prompted the safety emergency, nor whether it follows a particular incident or inspection finding.

The two orders come from the same department but address different problems: official travel spending on one side, and the day-to-day supervision of train operations on the other. The travel restriction covers air fares and government vehicles, the two routine costs of moving officials around the country; the emergency order instead extends working days to Sundays and puts reporting obligations directly on the chief engineers and the safety head.

Pakistan Railways is a state-run enterprise and its finances are part of the federal government's wider austerity programme, under which ministries have been pressed to cut discretionary spending. The notification on travel does not set out a deadline of its own, unlike the safety emergency, which runs to the end of 2026.

Taken together, the orders put the department's own officers under the same expectations the ministry is setting for the network: fewer paid journeys by air, more time on the ground, and a paper trail reaching the ministry every day.