The Central government has proposed to deliver more oxygen to Assam to meet the oxygen requirement of the State.
Officials in the health ministry said that along with Assam, oxygen will also be delivered to other Northeast States as well.
As on Sunday, 80 MT of oxygen in Assam has been offloaded under the Oxygen Express initiative. Assam was among other few states where Oxygen has been delivered as planned.
Oxygen has been collected from places like Hapa , Baroda, Mundra in the West and Rourkela, Durgapur, Tatanagar, Angul in the East and then delivering it to States of Uttarakhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Telangana, Punjab, Kerala, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh & Assam in complex operational route planning scenarios.
“So far, Indian Railways has delivered more than 16023 MT of LMO in more than 977 tankers to various states across the country,” a government communique said.
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It may be noted that 247 Oxygen Expresses have completed their journey so far and brought relief to various States. At present 12 loaded Oxygen Expresses on run with more than 920 MT of LMO in 50 tankers.
The highest ever single day load of more than 1142 MT of Oxygen relief delivered by Oxygen Expresses was on Sunday. Previous best was 1118 MT on May 20.
It is worth mentioning that Oxygen Expresses started their deliveries 30 days back on April 24 in Maharashtra with a load of 126 MT. Within one month time Indian Railways has delivered more than 16000 MT of LMO to 14 states across the country.
Oxygen relief by Oxygen Expresses reached 14 states namely Uttarakhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Telangana, Punjab, Kerala, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Assam.
614 MT of Oxygen has been offloaded in Maharashtra, nearly 3649 MT in Uttar Pradesh, 633 MT in Madhya Pradesh, 4600 MT in Delhi, 1759 MT in Haryana, 98 MT in Rajasthan, 1063 MT in Karnataka, 320 MT in Uttarakhand, 1024 MT in Tamil Nadu, 730 MT in Andhra Pradesh, 225 MT in Punjab, 246 MT in Kerala, 976 MT in Telangana and 80 MT in Assam.
Indian Railways has mapped different routes with Oxygen supply locations and keeps itself ready with any emerging need of the States. States provide tankers to the Indian Railways for bringing LMO.
In order to ensure that Oxygen relief reaches in the fastest time possible, Railways is creating new standards and unprecedented benchmarks in running of Oxygen Express Freight Trains.
The average speed of these critical Freight trains is way above 55 in most cases over long distances. Running on high priority Green Corridor, with a highest sense of urgency, operational teams of various zones are working round the clock in the most challenging circumstances to ensure that Oxygen reaches in the fastest possible time frame.
Technical stoppages have been reduced to 1 minute for crew changes over different sections.