NFR special trains helping small farmer & producers during lockdown

While gingers and lemons were mainly booked by farmers from Arunachal Pradesh, fresh betel nuts were booked by the farmers of Nagaland. Farmers from the Tinsukia area mainly booked tea and other items

GUWAHATI: Transportation of essential items like medical supplies, medical equipment, food, etc in small parcel sizes is very important during the lockdown in the wake of COVID-19. In order to fulfill this vital need, the Indian Railways has made railway parcel vans available for quick mass transportation by traders, e-commerce entities and other customers including State governments. The Railways have decided to run time-tabled parcel-special trains on select routes, to ensure uninterrupted supply of essential items.

All Zonal Railways are regularly identifying and notifying routes for these Parcel Special trains.

Presently these trains are being operated on eighty-two (82) routes. This enhanced running of parcel trains of the Railways is to be seen in the context to ramping up the freight operations in the country by making efforts to make it faster, customised and profitable for all, stated a release.

The NFR is also running time-tabled parcel trains in Guwahati-New Jalpaiguri, Guwahati-Agartala, Guwahati - Dibrugarh, Guwahati - Mendipathar and other routes to transport essentials and other items for various NE States. These parcel trains have also come to the rescue of small farmers and growers who are now availing the parcel train facility to transport their produces to nearby bigger markets and earning profits. Otherwise, all of their produces would have perished due to lack to transport mode due to lockdown.

The NFR is also stopping these parcel trains at various small stations for the local producers, farmers or growers who are in need of transporting small quantity of items. Materials for loading are now coming from various self help groups (SHGs) comprising villagers and actual growers without the involvement of any middle men. Commodities like green ginger, fresh lemon, fresh betel nuts, organic tea, organic ginger etc are being loaded from many small roadside stations with no previous record of such loading. While gingers and lemons were mainly booked by farmers from Arunachal Pradesh, fresh betel nuts were booked by the farmers of Nagaland. Farmers from Tinsukia area mainly booked tea and other items. By allowing such stoppages of the parcel trains, the NFR has captured market for transportation of new commodities through railways; and poor farmer and producers of various remote States are also able to earn significant amount by selling their produces in bigger cities easily. Items like organic ginger, organic tea and lemon are of high demand and going to places like New Delhi, Secunderabad etc.

About 83 tonnes of such items were loaded today in the Dibrugarh - Guwahati Kissan COVID Parcel Special train. Another 22,890 kgs of organic turmeric having high medicinal value were loaded and transported to Secunderabad from Guwahati in Covid Parcel Spl train today.

The total numbers of parcel trains run on Indian Railway till 05.05.2020 is 2,067, out of which 1,988 have been time-tabled trains. 54,292 Tonnes of consignments have been loaded, and the earnings have been Rs 19.77 crores.

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