At a time when the railways, roadways, waterways and airways all have been shut down, except for freight trains and a few cargo flight operations, India Post has emerged as a major lifesaver by dispatching medicines, ventilators medical test kits, personal protection equipment (PPE), medical equipment, etc to various hospitals and laboratories in the neighbouring states from Kolkata using the iconic Red Mail Parcel Vans during the lockdown period.

India Post has been the sole agency delivering bulk health kits and equipment from ICMR and other such institutions. Goutam Bhattacharya, Chief Post Master General of West Bengal Postal Circle told The Statesman that the circle has dispatched medical consignments to cities like Ranchi, Bhubaneswar, Patna, Guwahati and even Varanasi from its Kolkata sorting hub, situated besides the NSB International airport in Dum Dum.

At these destinations the respective state postal circles send on the consignments to the receiving hospitals and laboratories.

“In normal times, the post is sent through mail trains and passengers flights to other cities. But in their absence we have been receiving and sending mails by cargo and air force aircraft. Cargo flights do not have any schedule, making it very tough, and our concerned officials have been constantly keeping in touch and booking spaces. The red mail vans are used for transporting mails to head post offices within the city in normal course, but we have been sending the consignments using these red mail vans to neighbouring state postal circles in this lockdown,” he added.

On 11 April, an important medical consignment was received at Dumdum in the afternoon and was handed over to the Jharkhand Postal Circle at Ranchi at midnight, after being carried by a mail van all the way from Kolkata. The CPMG further stated that about eighty per cent of the postal employees in Kolkata stay in suburban areas and can not reach office due to the lockdown. So the circle has closed down certain less important post offices in the city and deployed the staff for crucial mail delivery system operations.

But most of the post offices have remained open and parcel bookings are taking place, though in very few numbers and customers have been told that there will be delay in delivery, he said. The WB Postal Circle, which includes WB, Sikkim and Andaman and Nicobar Islands, has disbursed about Rs 2,696 crores in about 13,36,000 post office small savings scheme transactions to its customers during the lockdown period.

Pensions have been delivered at doorsteps to octogenarian and ailing central government pensioners. To maintain social distancing, a limited number of postal employees have been working, stopping back office jobs to disburse pensions and calling people up over phone to stop the rush in the branch offices.

“The 9500 post offices in West Bengal disbursed payments of about Rs.1.48 crores since the past few days through the Aadhaar Enabled Payment Service (AEPS) system with aadhaar based biometric authentication through the branches of India Post Payments Bank. Most customers residing in rural areas who are unable to visit their banks located in distant areas due to the lockdown and also do not have nearby ATM facilities are getting benefited through this system. They are getting payments upto a maximum of Rs.10,000 in a single transaction,” Mr. Goutam Bhattacharya added.