By Shahab Omer
P
rivatisation. It is a word that is contentious across the political divide, and is usually one of those things that the government is criticised for by the opposition. Ideally, there should be no privatisation. Governments privatize things when they are unable to run them efficiently and are incurring losses too heavy to sustain. They need cash and that means they sell things off to make a quick buck. The problem? A lot of government
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owned entities (not all but some like public transport and hospitals) exist to make a loss. They are a service being provided for people and are thus not supposed to be turning any profit since they are benefitting taxpayers. The issue on hand is that the government seems to be on a trajectory where privatisation is their only option - a need exacerbated by Covid-19. Take, for example, the Pakistan Railways. According to a recent report by Pakistan Railways, the railways have incurred a total loss of over RS 119 billion in the last two years and in these two years, the number of trains has dropped from 120 to 84. In 2018-19, the
railways had incurred a deficit of RS 32.76 billion and in 2019-20, the department had incurred a deficit of more than RS 50.15 billion. This does not yet include losses incurred from the closure of trains because of Covid-19. Even before this current situation arose, two years ago, then minister for railways Sheikh Rasheedd Ahmad had said that in order to increase the revenue of the department and reduce the deficit, it was imperative to build commercial plazas on the valuable lands of the railways and all hospitals would be privatized in future. Now, with Azam Swati in Rasheed’s old portfolio, the process is finally
