Railway may introduce door-to-door goods container delivery service for city industry
In order to facilitate the biggest industrial city of Punjab, Railway may introduce door-to-door services to deliver goods container for the industrialists soon.
In order to facilitate the biggest industrial city of Punjab, Railway may introduce door-to-door services to deliver goods container for the industrialists soon.
The idea was floated by the Chamber of Industrial and Commercial Undertakings (CICU) members in a meeting convened by divisional railway manager (DRM), Ferozepur Division, Anuj Prakash, here, on Saturday.
The meeting was a part of Railway's Passenger Facilitation Fortnight. DRM Anuj Prakash invited the problems as well as suggestions from the industrialists, so that railway may resolve the problem and can implement the suggestions benefitting both railway and industry.
CICU general secretary Upkar Singh Ahuja said, “Ludhiana has a disadvantage as we don't have any sea port in city. But, through railway the freight charges can be reduced manifolds, which can bring the industry in competition by deducting input cost.”
“For bringing goods from Shanghai to Chennai, we have to pay freight charges at the rate of `1.60, but to bring same unit of goods from Chennai to Ludhiana by road, it costs us `5. But, if railway gives us better services our freight charges can be reduced,” said Ahuja.
He said, “We have given a suggestion to introduce service of door-to-door delivery of goods container, which will save our time as well as money. Under this, proper ceiling of containers to protect theft or damage of goods during transportation among others will be done. The suggestions were well taken by the DRM and other officials present on the spot.”
Now, CICU will prepare a database of the industrialists who are ready to use door-to-door delivery of goods container services. Ahuja said, “CICU has 1,100 direct members and by including all 28 associations affiliated to it, we come to around 10,000 members. I think all members will welcome the decision.”
Industrial Railway Committee head Anand Kumar said, “Railway can play an important role in the uplift of industry, which is largely dependent on goods transportation through tracks. Introduction of dedicated freight corridor will also benefit us, which is a long-pending demand.”
Giving possibilities of implementation, senior divisional operational manager (SDOM) Jagtosh Shukla said, “For providing this door-to-door delivery of goods container services, railway may contact a few agencies working in the area. In Ludhiana, we have three such agencies, two in Sahnewal and one in Dhandhari, thus we can involve them to provide better and easy services to industrialists.”
Prakash said, “Railway gains majorly through transportation of goods and thus focus is to increase the level of our services to raise the income as well. We will act on the suggestions positively.”
“For decongestion of Ludhiana railway station and for making loading-deloading of goods easy, Railway is developing Baddowal as major logistic station,” Prakash said.
CICU members also gave demands for high-speed trains to New Delhi, halting of more UP and Bihar bound trains at Dhandhari station.
On this occasion, CICU vice-presidents Jagdish Kular and YS Walia were present with railway officials, including senior divisional electrical engineer Anurag Agarwal, senior divisional mechanical engineer RK Saini, divisional traffic manager SP Singh Bhatia, divisional commercial manager Tarlok Singh and others.
