Railways playing shunting game with booked parcels

Chief luggage supervisor N. Patel said unless stations where parcels are to be received send a message about a wrongly unloaded parcel it was a very difficult situation — a station could not hold on to a parcel for long. He said it was up to a person for whom the parcel was meant to take up the matter and trace out the wrongly-unloaded parcel. Patel keeps blaming consignees not coming on time to receive a parcel, and studiedly avoided comment on why a parcel should be dumped at the wrong station at all. He parried all questions on half-hearted follow-up by railway staff, denying any deliberate attempt by staffers with ulterior motives. In fact, Patel blamed senders and receivers of parcels for every problem they face.

He cites the case of a Hero Honda motorcycle from Ujjain, which is yet to be claimed, and despite attempts by railway authorities to contact the consignee, nobody has come forward to receive it. They will now wait for some days and then auction it. What belies their claim is the case of N Joshi, a resident of Chanakyapuri in Sama. “They call you up to inform you once and when you go to claim it, they do not even co-operate to see that the parcel is cleared without trouble,” he said.

Joshi’s parcel was unloaded at the wrong station instead of Vadodara. In this case, Patel says that the parcels unloaded at the wrong station were the responsibility of the railways only for a month. After that, auction it is! He parries questions on non-cooperation by the railways and simply denies it.

Another person, R.K. Pandya of Karelibaug, who had to pursue the railway authorities for a month to claim his own parcel said, “My parcel was sent from Delhi and I was told that it would reach me in a week. It has not reached me till now.” On constant followup, he was told he would be informed when the parcel reaches Vadodara. Pandya claims, “I was later informed only after a month and given no specifications for the delay”. Here, Patel attributes it all to wrong addresses written by the senders or lack of response from the receivers, which delayed the procedure. He still had no answer for why a parcel is off-loaded at the wrong station at all.