The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Separate terminal for courier services at Chennai airport

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jul 07, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Separate terminal for courier services at Chennai airport

P. Oppili

— Photo: A. Muralitharan

New building: The new courier terminal at the Chennai old airport.

CHENNAI: A new separate terminal for handling import and export couriers started functioning at the old airport from Wednesday.

Hitherto, the courier loads used to land at the international departure area and the clearing of loads used to be done at the international arrival, said Airports Authority of India officials.

The new facility had been created in 900 sq m with ground floor measuring 500 sq. m and the first floor measuring 400 sq. m. The Customs and Airports Authority of India would supervise the operations and the custodianship of the new terminal had been entrusted to a private organisation, said the officials.

Increase in parcels

Records with the Customs authorities showed that there has been a considerable increase in the number of courier parcels cleared at the Chennai airport in the last three years. During 2004-05, the authorities cleared more than 58,000 parcels, in the next year it touched over 70,000 and in the last fiscal they cleared a total of 1.49 lakh parcels, said C. Rajan, Commissioner of Customs, Airport. The increase in the number of parcels had earned good revenue in the form of Customs Duty. For example during 2004-05, the Customs department earned Rs. 7 crore, the next year Rs. 8 crore and in the last fiscal it earned Rs. 15 crore, said Mr. Rajan.

The new terminal to a large extent helped in decongesting both the international arrival and departure areas, said the authorities.

Under the old system, whenever the couriers were sent through the departure hall of the passenger terminal, it had to be accompanied by a person called as ‘On Board Courier.’ Under the new system, that could be avoided, said the officials.

Various facilities at the new terminal included X’ ray baggage inspection system, conveyor system, electronic weighing scale with computer interface, baggage trolleys hydraulic tow, surveillance systems - CCTV camera recording with backup, said S. Sakthivadivel, Managing Director, Esquire Express India private limited, the Custodian of the terminal.

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