LAHORE: An inter-city train driver in Pakistan has been suspended after he made an unscheduled stop to pick up some yoghurt.
A video of the driver’s assistant collecting the snack from a street stall before climbing back into the carriage has been circulating on social media.
The incident on Monday raised questions about the safety and regulation of railways in Pakistan, where accidents are common due to mismanagement and neglect.
“When you stop a train in the middle (of the tracks) it becomes a safety issue. Safety is our priority. We cannot tolerate anything which compromises safety,” Syed Ijaz-ul-Hassan Shah, a spokesman for the railway ministry, told AFP on Wednesday.
The passenger service had started its journey in the eastern city of Lahore and was moving south toward Karachi.
In a statement the country’s minister of railways, Azam Khan Swati, warned that he will not “allow anyone to use national assets for personal use.”
A railway official admitted to AFP that such incidents are not uncommon in Pakistan, and that oversight is often lacking.
More than 60 people were killed in June when a train hurtling through farmland smashed into the carriages of another service that had derailed minutes earlier.
Pakistani driver stops train mid-journey to buy yoghurt, suspended by authorities
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Pakistani driver stops train mid-journey to buy yoghurt, suspended by authorities
- The incident raised questions about the safety and regulation of railways in Pakistan
- Train had started its journey in the eastern city of Lahore and was moving south toward Karachi
Rating firm S&P says it won’t rush Iran war downgrades, sees risks for countries like Pakistan
- Agency says it is monitoring indebted energy importers as higher oil prices strain finances
- Gulf economies seen better placed to weather shock, though Bahrain flagged as vulnerable
LONDON: S&P Global said it would not make any knee-jerk sovereign rating cuts following the outbreak of war in the Middle East, but warned on Thursday that soaring oil and gas prices were putting a number of already cash-strapped countries at risk.
The firm’s top analysts said in a webinar that the conflict, which has involved US and Israeli strikes against Iran and Iranian strikes against Israel, US bases and Gulf states, was now moving from a low- to moderate-risk scenario.
Most Gulf countries had enough fiscal buffers, however, to weather the crisis for a while, with more lowly rated Bahrain the only clear exception.
Qatar’s banking sector could also struggle if there were significant deposit outflows in reaction to the conflict, although there was no evidence of such strains at the moment, they said.
“We don’t want to jump the gun and just say things are bad,” S&P’s head global sovereign analyst, Roberto Sifon-Arevalo, said.
The longer the crisis was prolonged, though, “the more difficult it is going to be,” he added.
Sifon-Arevalo said Asia was the second-most exposed region, due to many of its countries being significant Gulf oil and gas importers.
India, Thailand and Indonesia have relatively lower reserves of oil, while the region also had already heavily indebted countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka whose finances would be further hurt by rising energy prices.
“We are closely monitoring these (countries) to see how the credit stories evolve,” Sifon-Arevalo said.
