Pakistan Railways Minister Khawaja Saad Rafique on Monday inaugurated Pakistan Railways’ own e-ticketing system. The inauguration ceremony was held in Lahore at Pakistan Railways’ Headquarters where CEO Railways Javed Anwer, GM Railways Anjum Pervez and other notable names from railway department were also present.
Fahad Rizwan, Director Information Technology, while briefing the audience about the system mentioned that,
“Pakistan Railways and United Bank Limited (UBL) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to issue E-ticketing to people two months ago and the project has been completed within a stipulated period.”
With the ticketing system, passengers will be able to book their tickets through Internet and Mobile Phones. The payments will be done through credit cards, debit cards, mobile banking accounts or UBL Omni. Once booking is done and payment is made, a confirmation message will be sent to the user comprising of important details including ticket number, coach number, seat number, identity card number, and complete date of travel.
Currently, Pakistan Railways have only 45 reservation offices across the country, but now with the launch of this facility travelers will have access to 45,000 UBL Omni branches. Initially introduced for the routes Lahore-Rawalpindi Railcar and Islamabad-Karachi Green Line Train, it is expected to scale to other routes within a matter of 8 months.
For bus commuters, BookMe, a ticketing startup based out of Lahore, is already providing many services. The startup also offers an API to integrate to third party applications. With Pakistan Railways stepping up in technology adoption, there are chances that the same system will be made efficient to use for other transportation means in the country.
