Fish, farm products occupy lion's share in Railway parcel earnings

Vijayawada: Fish, onions, poultry products, eggs and other agriculture commodities have lion's share in the parcels transported from Vijayawada railway division.

Most agriculture produce are exported to North Eastern States. The Railway officials are also planning to boost the transportation of goods from the region and explaining the farmers on the benefits oftransportation through trains compared to roadways.

Parcel revenue of Vijayawada Division in the current financial year has increased by leaps and bounds compared to previous two years. By the end of August-2021, Vijayawada Division had achieved record parcel earnings of Rs 12.31 crore and surpassing the normal year's (2019-2020) earnings by a record 58 per cent.

During the current financial year, 34,567.7 tonnes of commodities were loaded from the division with fish occupying the lion's share of 11511.7 tonnes. Meticulous planning with special focus on the transportation of essential commodities combined with relentless efforts of BDU teams at field level were instrumental in achieving this feat.

Tadepallligudem station created an all-time record during the month of August by achieving Rs 1.27 crore parcel earnings. During the month of August-2021, seven Kisan Rails operated from Tadepalligudem carrying 2,110 tonnes of onion to different destinations. Apart from onions, poultry eggs, fish and other commodities were also transported in parcel vans to North East parts of the country. The local BDU teams were successful in explaining the benefits like safety, speed transit and concession through rail transport than roadways.

New initiatives like running of time-tabled parcel trains, Kisan Specials with 50 per cent subsidy under Operation Green TOP to Total has immensely contributed to tremendous rise in parcel traffic. These new initiatives have led to diversifying the parcel commodity basket of the division, capturing new traffic and attracting the conventional road traffic.

Parcel transportation to the farther destinations like Howrah, Nizamuddin, Guwahati, etc helped in connecting more places for supplying essential commodities.

The Kisan Rails generally consist of 22-23 parcel vans (VPs), each VP has the capacity of carrying 23 tonnes of commodities. Recently, Railway Board relaxed rules for transport of parcel cargo through GS coaches with uniform distribution of payload of 10 tonnes per coach in case of shortage of parcel vans in the division for optimum utilisation of idle rakes.

Shivendra Mohan, Divisional Railway Manager, Vijayawada has complimented P Bhaskar Reddy, Sr Divisional Commercial Manager and other officials on increasing parcel revenue.