Pakistan Railways has joined hands with Google to revolutionize scrapyard management by incorporating a state-of-the-art Scrapyard Management System powered by Google technologies and implemented by Tech Valley Pakistan.
In the first step, the management system will be deployed in Railways Carriage Factory, Islamabad as a pilot project. Upon success, it will be expanded to the national level.
Federal Ministry for Railways Senator Muhammad Azam Khan Swati inaugurated the Scrapyard Management System along with Google Productivity and Collaboration Suite. Senior officials from the Ministry of Railways and CEO Tech Valley Mr Umar Farooq along with his team were present at the occasion. Representatives from Google also joined the event online through Google meet.
During the inauguration ceremony, Federal Minister Railways told, “Pakistan Railways has an annual scrap disposal target of 2 billion rupees which is added to the national exchequer. For quite some time copper scrap has not been disposed of, recently the same scrap was given on Government-to-Government (G2G) basis to M/S POF and Railways received one billion PKRs in the last two months.”
The cloud-based scrapyard management system will digitise the Scrapyard assets of Pakistan Railways, streamlining the scrapyard inventory management & bringing transparency to the Scrap Management process of Pakistan Railways.
Along with Scrapyard Management System, the collaboration and productivity suite was also inaugurated by Federal Minister for Railways. The suite will provide Railway employees with an effective way to collaborate with different teams using the latest digital tools. This will also aid in ensuring productivity while working remotely or communicating from distant locations.
On this occasion, Umar Farooq, CEO Tech Valley said, “Under the Prime Minister’s vision of Digital Pakistan, digitizing scrapyard management and deploying Google Workspace are one of the many upcoming steps in digitizing the Pakistan Railways and current government at large.”
Speaking at the event Federal Minister Railways appreciated the efforts of Google, Tech Valley team and officers from Railways especially project lead Saad Ullah Zahid, who were involved in the development and implementation process of the Scrapyard Management System.
He further added, “An IT-based system is the only way such process can be streamlined and transparency can be brought to Government institutes”. The minister also shared details about the other technological initiatives that are currently being deployed in Railways including RABTA, Complaint Management System, Facial recognition, E-Ticketing and E-Procurement.