North Central Railway zone officers start helpline to help in delivery of essential items

A dedicated helpline called "SETU" has been started by a group of Indian Railway Traffic Service (IRTS) officers to ensure smooth transportation of essential commodities in different parts of the country amid the national lockdown, a senior officer of North Central Railway said on Thursday.

The team is virtually acting as a bridge between suppliers and purchasers with the difference that the service is limited to overcome the shortage of essential commodities, Sanchit Tyagi, Senior Divisional Commercial Manager (DCM), North Central Railway, Allahabad said.

Inspired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's call for 'Vayam Rashtrey Jaagrayam' while announcing the extension of the nationwide lockdown on April 14, he said a team of 15 trainee officers with support and guidance of four IRTS officers - Sanjay Kumar, Srikant Mallela, Vishal Arjun and himself - started a voluntary initiative through SETU on the same day.

Explaining how the system works, Tyagi said suppliers sometimes find it difficult to dispatch the essential commodities in time during lockdown restrictions. If they approached the SETU helpline - 8448848477, the officers will ensure fulfilment of all the formalities in time, including transportation of commodities to the nearest railway station and loading of the consignment by the first possible parcel train, the officer added.

In the event of shortage of masks, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) kits, medicines, vegetables, food grains, etc in any district of the country can approach the district administration concerned and may approach the senior DCM or senior divisional operations manager (DOM) of the nearest railway division, provided the supplier is ready to supply the item immediately.

The rest of the logistics would be taken care by SETU helpline, including helping the supplier get necessary permits to transport the goods up to the station, he pointed out.

Finally, the consignment would be transported by the parcel trains running as per time table with follow up action of monitoring it online," Tyagi added.

Within two days of setting up the team, the helpline has been buzzing with requests for transporting more than 40 tonnes of materials, the officer claimed.

According to Tyagi, requests from Agra, Badaun, Banswara, Bardhman, Bhagalpur, Bhilwara, Bilaspur, Dhanbad, Goa, Kashipur, Madhubani, Surat in addition to major cities like New Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad for transporting consignments of PPEs, critical medicines, raw materials for making masks, covers for medicine, etc, have been received so far.

Giving one such example of sending life-saving medicines from Delhi to Madhubani (in Bihar) for an ailing woman, the officer said, "We are helping people by transporting even 500 grams of medicines in case of emergency."