New Delhi: In what comes as a relief to commuters, the Indian Railways has extended the computerisation of the Parcel Management System (PMS) to over 500 locations.
Earlier the facility was limited to 84 locations. This has been increased to 143 locations in phase-II and 523 locations in phase-III.
Ministry of Railways said that the PMS has been undergoing total transformation and is geared to providing transportation for small consignments, over a vast network of stations.
"Small businesses and traders (especially in smaller cities and towns) have been using these services for transportation of their merchandises from bigger cities and production centres to the place of their business in a fast, reliable and cheap manner," the ministry was quoted as saying by IANS.
"Common man also uses these services for transportation of household goods, furniture, two-wheeler for which parcel services are the only convenient mode of transportation," the ministry added.
The ministry further said that the parcels are charged only on the basis of weight and volume and not on the basis of the type of commodity. The PMS service is now also equipped with advance booking of parcel, 120 days before the consignment date.
The ministry stated that barcoding on each consignment is done for tracking of parcel and status updation of packages through GPRS network via the transmission of data from handheld mobile devices through scanning of barcodes.
"In order to undertake further modernization or revamp of PMS, as per the directions of Railway Board, QCI has been engaged to study the system and to suggest further improvements based on the customer feedback and the latest trends in this sector," the ministry said.
