Disappointing railways

I travelled on a Jinnah Express train from Lahore to Karachi on June 22 with my young daughter in First Class. Instead of departing at 2:30pm, the train was delayed till 3:45pm. While waiting there was no railway official to update passengers on when the train would depart. Strangely while we were boarding the train, we noticed that the train bore the label of Greenline Express instead of Jinnah Express as we had booked it.

When our journey started, we began to notice small cockroaches crawling around our cabin. The beds were infested with bed bugs and we had a horribly uncomfortable experience trying to sleep. The journey soon became unbearable and the staff was called to spray the insects away. It was a futile exercise and two of our fellow passengers deserted our cabin to look for bug free spaces.

The water in the washroom finished around Rohri and was never refilled. The train came to a stop near Hyderabad due to the derailment of a Bahauddin Zakaria express train at Kotri. We proceeded towards Karachi after a long delay to finally reach Karachi Cantt station at 1pm. This was six hours after our expected arrival time. We will be flying between cities next time around. Never has the train service been as deplorable as it is currently. Those in charge should be ashamed of how much the quality of service has dropped.

Khadija Khashe

Karachi