Soon, rly parcel tracking to become more efficient

Soon, rly parcel tracking to become more efficient

Pune: Tracking parcels in the Railways is a tough job. However, the new Parcel Management System (PMS), to be introduced by the Railways, will alleviate this problem and help in tracking passengers’ parcels. The Pune Railway Division will introduce the facility within this fortnight. This system will overhaul the entire parcel delivery system, informed senior official of Pune division.

Several Western Railway stations such as Mumbai Central are a part of PMS. The facility is also available at Surat station as well as Vapi, Valsadand Baroda. Pune is among 57 stations across India to be added to the system. The railway parcelling system is popular among traders, who use it for transportation of perishables and non-perishables, including books, medicines, furniture and electronic appliances.
 
According to the official, PMS was part of the Railways’ efforts to digitise key operations. Two other digitised systems introduced by the Railways are Coaching Operation Information System (COIS) and Freight Operation Information System (FOIS) for tracking and monitoring of passengers and goods bookings, respectively. 

“PMS will make booking and delivery of parcels much more efficient, quick and discretion-free. It will also bring in more transparency and enable online tracking of packages by customers on their mobile phones or email through a 10-digit unique Progressive Reference Record (PRR) number,” said an official. “Work on getting the system up and running is currently going on at the parcel office,” he added.

Officials feel the system will weed out corruption as well as overloading of packages. Overloading or delivery at a wrong station ails the railways’ presently. “As everything is manual, users are at the mercy of employees. If a parcel is buried under bigger cartons, it often ‘over-travels’ to subsequent stations from where it has to be re-booked for the destination station, taking longer for delivery,” said an official.

Passengers will also save money as they pay Rs 10 per hour for an undelivered parcel as railway clerks often don’t inform customers that their consignments have arrived. “With PMS, a message will be immediately sent to a customer as soon as his parcel arrives,” said a senior railway officer.

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