Kh Saad complains of ‘disinformation’ on Hazara Express tragedy

Complaining that a false story was aired nearly on all TV channels, Minister for Railways Khawaja Saad Rafique said on Wednesday it was unfortunate that nobody bothered to discuss the real cause of the Hazara Express crash that led to the loss of several lives a few days ago, reported 24NewsHD TV channel.

Addressing a press conference in Islamabad, he said he had tried to make journalists understand time and again that the wood they were talking about was actually called a ‘fish plate’, and it was related to short-circuiting and signaling. “There are 11 to 16 such plates between one signal and the other at every railway station,” he said, adding, “These are also called ‘isolated rail joints’ and are imported from Netherlands and Germany.”

Khawaja Saad further said that these joints were used the world over. “The tragedy is that it was not only social media on which people spread false and baseless news, but TV channels, too, without investigating the matter, reported that small pieces of wood were welded together,” the minister regretted.

He went on to say that the system of signaling could not function without these plates, and these had nothing to do with the train accident that took place in Sindh. “This is also an important component of computer-based interlocking system,” he concluded.   

As many as 35 people were killed while 100 were injured when Hazara Express, with 1,100 passengers on board, which left Karachi’s railway station met with an accident near the Sarhari railway station in Sanghar district of Sindh four days ago on August 5.