Seven reform measures taken since the country's independence for appropriate institutional changes in Bangladesh Railway (BR) failed to deliver, leaving it as a loss-incurring entity as 45 years ago.
Sources said the relevant authorities overruled a recommended autonomous BR management meant for operating the popular transport system to its full potential.
A latest reform that began 10 years ago also proved useless as the consultant's recommendation for turning the state-owned enterprise into an independent entity with full autonomy remained shelved, they said.
Though the reform was supposed to bring changes in administrative, financial, management and accounting systems of the BR, they added, it still continued to run through orthodoxy-based bureaucratic tiers and manual practices.
"The bureaucratic tiers rather increased in the latest reform, making any decision process longer than before," said an official.
He said there are duplications of works between the BR and the Ministry of Railway (MoR) for an increase in tiers with both doing policy and planning work.
Senior officials at the BR said since the independence, the railway system had tried to bring bureaucratic changes either ignoring the importance of the pro-poor transport service or for lack of knowledge about multi-disciplinary railway system.
"But during British India, the railway was totally independent without control of the British government which helped unable it to be profitable and expansion owning the country's significant portion of land," said one of them.
In the name of such reforms, the railway has been rendered weaker from one reform to another afterwards, he added.
The latest reform under the Asian Development Bank financing made only rail-container service a corporation in April 2016 but made the Ministry of Railway (MoR) top-heavy with 108 officials against recommendation for 61 to carry out policy-level work.
DG's power was curbed in taking important decisions like promotion, transfer of the railway officials who work under him and it proved to be enough to reduce efficiency of the railway.
According to official record, the railway, which owned from the British India 2603.92-kilometre route, could add only 274 kilometres during 69 years.
Since the start of Pakistan era, railway had been operated first under Pakistan Railway Board and then East Pakistan Railway Board introduced in 1962 which mainly tried to follow the British system running under board of directors. But this power was first stalled in 1973 for three years but totally stopped in 1982.
Record shows that after 1983, the railway has been tried to be operated under the communications ministry with director general-cum-secretary as administrative head till 1995.
In 1995, a nine-member Bangladesh Railway Authority was formed which could not function well, forcing the government to launch a fresh reform in 2006. Before that, the BR was a section under 'road and rail division' of the ministry of communications.
Sources said under the latest reform programme the government announced line of business (LoB) of BR, empowering MoR, as the DG is accountable to the secretary. Organogram of MoR was doubled than the recommended over 60 personnel.
They also alleged that the DG's power has been limited to promoting lower-tier railway officials and employees and MoR's strength has been enlarged. Dire need of huge manpower at field level to run different stations and trains, however, remained unmet.
Officials said under the latest reform, necessary studies were done for introducing seven modules, including financial accounting, fixed-asset management, payroll module and procurement and inventory-management modules. But still the BR calculates accounting system manually for non- installation of its own IT network.
However, Railway Secretary Feroz Salah Uddin said the BR has been functioning with its full autonomy in operation of the state-owned trains.
"Ministry does the work of supervision, monitoring, coordination so that development work can be expedited and quality ensured," he told the FE at his office.
The secretary said the reform was able to decentralise the power between the ministry and the BR. Still, he added, reform is a continuous process and the ministry has been trying to do best for the railway sector.
However, transport expert Prof Md Shamsul Hoque said worldwide practice in increasing institutional strength is to give power to this kind of technical institution in functioning independently.
He said BR's strength has been weakened following controlling by non-professional and non-technical persons for long. From the context of sustainability, it is not desirable.
Dr M Shamsul Hoque also opined that independent decision-making power of the BR could increase its nonoperational benefit through using its huge land and reducing dependence on subsidy.
"Bright future of the Bangladesh Railway has gradually faded out. So it is needed to be sufficiently empowered to make it performance-oriented," said the professor of civil engineering of BUET when his opinion was sought in this regard.
Experts also emphasised the functioning of railway, from top to bottom, under a single organisation as mass and public transport and a pro-people service sector.
The BR annual loss continues to rise, amounting to Tk over 80 billion till 2015.
smunima@yahoo.com
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