BENGALURU: To tackle the acute shortage of medical oxygen in hospitals and Covid Care Centres in the State, Chief Secretary P Ravi Kumar on Saturday asked the Railway Board to run oxygen express trains to Karnataka on priority, said highly placed railway sources. The Railway has sent a positive response to the request.
The letter to Railway Board Chairman Suneeth Sharma has requested operation of oxygen special trains that would carry tanker trucks between Whitefield or Doddaballapura railway stations in Bengaluru and Kalinganagar or Angul stations in Odisha as well as Vishakapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, a source said. It has asked that these be operated twice a week.
“The oxygen special trains require to be operated on high priority basis through the green channel to ensure timely delivery at the destination stations,” said the letter. It has also called for nominating a railway nodal officer for monitoring the movements of the trains. General Manager, South Western Railway, Gajanan Mallya, has responded positively to the move, a source said.
“The transportation will be done through its Roll-on Roll-off wagons.” While the Doddaballapur railway station already has a ramp, the Satellite Goods Terminal (SGT) at Whitefield does not have one. “The engineering team has put up a ramp there within record time to keep it ready to run these trains,” he added.
To ensure that the Divisional Railway Hospital and the Covid Care Centre of the Bengaluru Railway Division does not suffer from any oxygen shortage, the Division has announced the setting up of a liquid oxygen plant with a capacity of 2,000 litres as well as plans to purchase it from multiple supply sources.
A marathon meeting was held on Sunday by Divisional Railway Manager A K Verma with hospital authorities and top railway officials to take stock of the infrastructure requirements at the hospital and its Covid Care Centre.
To counter allegations that the food supplied free of cost to its patients was not good, Verma had lunch at the hospital. “The food is very good. It is even better than home food. We are proposing an increase in protein if some patients require them as we only supply vegetarian food here,” he said.