Fact-check: Posts falsely claim railway bogies imported from China are faulty

The 46 railway bogies imported from China by Pakistan, at the cost of $149 million, were non-functional, alleged several social media users.

The claim is false.

Claim

On January 3, a verified Twitter account posted that train bogies imported from China were not suitable for Pakistani tracks.

“88 Pakistani officers inspected/approved these bogies in China,” the user wrote, “Such a big loss, clearly they should be fired.”

The tweet has been viewed over 280,000 times on Twitter and liked 3,610 times, on January 10.

On January 4, another Twitter user wrote that the minister for railway “bought $150 million worth of bogies which cannot run on Pakistani train tracks.”

Fact

Three officials of the Pakistan Railways confirmed that the bogies were operational and ran for 2,500 kilometres in the country.

However, some modifications were made to ensure further security for passengers, the officials added. These modifications were funded by China.

Shahid Aziz, the additional general manager mechanic at the state-owned Pakistan Railways, told Geo Fact Check that the bogies were up and running.

“These [bogies] travelled 2,500 kilometres from Karachi to Peshawar to Lahore to Faisalabad and then to Khanewal,” Aziz said, “There is no issue at all of not being operational.”

The official added that one concern raised by Pakistani authorities with China was that the guard, who sits in the last bogie of the train, should also have the privilege to stop the train in case of any untoward incident, such as a robbery or a fire.

“The Chinese realised that this issue can be fixed by expanding the diameter of the pipes,” the officials told Geo Fact Check, “They [China] fixed [the pipes] with their own funds.”

Another official of the Pakistan Railways, Babar Ali Raza, the director general public relations, also confirmed to Geo Fact Check that the claims circulating online were incorrect and that only pipes were modified to give additional privileges to the guard.

“The bogies travelled [on the tracks] from Karachi to Lahore, they did not fly to Lahore,” Raza said, “That should be enough to tell you how wrong these claims are.”

Raza further explains that the project with China was of 230 railway bogies, of which 46 were to be imported from China. The remaining 184 will be made locally at the carriage factory in Islamabad, after China transfers technology.

On January 7 in a press conference, the Minister for Railways Khawaja Saad Rafique also confirmed that the news was false and that bogies were tested before being sent to Pakistan and then tested again in Pakistan by running them for 2,500 kilometers on Pakistani train tracks.

He also showed the pipes that were expanded. “These [pipe modifications] were funded by China,” he added.

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