From Tripura Courier services halted at Agartala airport

Agartala: The postal department and courier service providers are facing difficulties in delivering goods out of Tripura as cargo operations at the airport here have been suspended since December last year, officials said on Wednesday.
He said that non-availability of cargo facility in the new terminal building of Maharaja Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya Airport here has made it difficult to ensure prompt delivery of urgent letters or documents to various locations.
Recently, Agartala postal division superintendent Pradip Majumder wrote to the Airport Authority of India to allow air transportation of essential goods but “no positive response has been received yet”, an official said.

“We have submitted all relevant documents to the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS), a regulatory body, to introduce cargo facilities at the new terminal building. There is no problem,” said an airport official.
A team from BCAS visited the airport twice but “has not given approval yet”, he said.
“Since we have not found any other alternative, we are sending the postal items through Railway Mail Service (RMS) via Guwahati. It takes a lot of time and is not foolproof. That is why duplicate postal items And the movement is taking so much time. It also affects the speed post facility,” said a postal department official.

Courier services provider DTDC is also witnessing delays in delivery of goods from Tripura.
Even if one books our premium service, it will take four to five days to deliver a letter from Agartala to Kolkata as air transportation at the airport has been stopped since December last year. The only way left for us is to deliver letters and documents outside the state,” said Karnajit Sarkar, a DTDC executive here.
He added that many students and job seekers could not send their papers on time due to problems.

The airport authority is also facing difficulties in handling dead bodies at the new facility.
“We face problems when a dead body needs to be moved from Agartala to another place. Due to lack of cargo facility, the dead bodies are brought to the terminal building for checking which makes flyers and airlines Shame on those. If the cargo facility was available, the bodies could have been sent directly to the cargo terminal for movement,” said an airport official.