Railways transported 61,978 tonnes of parcel during lockdown, unlock period

New Delhi: The Central Railway has dispatched 61,978 tonnes of parcel in a phased manner during the nationwide lockdown and the unlock period, as per data obtained till September 10. These parcel includes essential commodities such as perishable goods, medicines, pharma products, food and others.

All passenger train services were discontinued from March 23 in an effort to prevent the spread of COVID19 epidemic in India. However, apart from the graded resumption of special trains, freight and parcel trains have been running continuously to maintain the supply chain of essential commodities across the country.

Railways introduced Express trains for parcel which ran in a timely manner for quick transportation of essential commodities and to maintain the supply chain.

The Central Railways has operated 465 parcel trains including 38,618 tonnes of essential commodities, including perishable goods, pharma products/medicines, e-commerce products and other hard parcels till September 10. Also, it has been decided that these parcel express trains wuill operate till December 31, 2020.

After the resumption of some special trains with effect from June 1, the Central Railway has sent a parcel of 19,290 tonnes in these special trains.

The Ministry of Railways started the first ever Kisan Rail in India on Central Railway between Devlali and Danapur (Bihar) as a weekly train from August 7 to help the farmers to send their goods to distant areas at the earliest.

The initiative has received a good response from the farmers and hence the train was extended to Muzaffarpur and Sangola/Pune to Manmad too was added to the Kisan Link Rail. The train now runs thrice a week from September 8.

So far, Kisan Rail has completed 10 trips with over 2,200 tonnes of perishable items like pomegranate, capsicum, green chillies, ginger, lemon and ice-fish etc.

During this COVID-19 epidemic, the Central Railway has sent a total of 61,978 tonnes of parcels including 38,618 tonnes in parcel trains, 19,290 tonnes in parcel vans of special trains; The milk tanker comprises 1,804 tonnes and the farmer rail 2,266 tonnes.