When the link to train service’s reservation system went down, a sizable number of people looking to purchase tickets online for a variety of destinations endured hours of difficulty.
When the link to the train service’s reservation system went down on Monday, a sizable number of people looking to purchase tickets from Pakistan Railways (PR) online for a variety of destinations endured hours of difficulty.
The issue started when the National Telecom Corporation (NTC) system—which provides the government of the country’s official information and communication technology services—suddenly stopped functioning. However, after four and a half hours, the concerned authorities asserted that the system had been restored.
“Our online reservation is connected to the NTC system, which was unavailable due to a technical issue. It went down at 2:45 and didn’t come back online until around 7:15. But we began educating the general public about this issue through our information offices, the media, social media, etc.”, said Arshad Islam, the CEO of PR.
“The system crashes as a result of online traffic. You can think of it like a highway; if you notice that traffic is moving slowly, you must assume that there are more vehicles on the road than is necessary, which will choke off traffic,” he continued.
The PR’s e-ticketing, financial, and human resource systems all failed on January 27, 2021, causing 60 online reservation offices to be cut off from the main servers out of concern for data loss. However, by utilising the host server of NTC, the then-PR administration was able to restore the online reservation system for seats. Later, it also successfully recovered all of the data using different servers and applications.
After firing the entire team of IT specialists hired during the tenure of the former minister, PR management headed by the then-minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmad fired the IT director for the organisation in June 2020.
The IT director had only been hired about six months prior. Under the guise of poor performance, the director had been fired. However, sources claim that the action was politically motivated and had a negative impact on the railroads’ IT department’s productivity.