Odisha has sent 15 tankers with more than 250 tonnes of medical oxygen from steel plants located in Rourkela, Jajpur and Angul towns to Visakhapatnam, Hyderabad, Indore, Pune, Mumbai and Nagpur in the last 24 hours. .
Odisha police said a dedicated corridor had been formed for prompt and unhindered movement of the trucks.
Y. K Jethwa, Additional Director General (Law and Order), has been designated as the nodal officer for coordinated action in loading and transporting medical oxygen.
Two more tankers from Angul to Visakhapatnam and another two from Jajpur to Ghaziabad and Visakhapatnam were scheduled to leave soon.
“Apart from fulfilling the requirements of Odisha, the RSP [Rourkela Steel Plant], along with its associate unit, has been supplying LMO [Liquid Medical Oxygen] to Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh,” said its spokesperson Archana Satpathy.
In April, the company supplied more than 1300 tonnes of LMO to different parts of the country.
Tata Steel said the company was supplying 300-400 tonnes of LMO daily to States such as Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Jharkhand, Bihar, Odisha and West Bengal through their manufacturing units in Jamshedpur in Jharkhand and Kalinganagar and Dhenkanal in Odisha.
“We stand ready to increase the supply, though currently there is a shortage of containers and trailers to carry and transport the oxygen. We hope that the transportation issue is sorted out expeditiously and the required quantity of LMO reaches the desired destinations. We are working on alternative sourcing as well,” the company said.
Oxygen tankers were also airlifted from the Biju Patnaik International Airport here.
