Cargo unit shift at Bagdogra airport

TT, 25 July 2019,  Siliguri: The Siliguri Jalpaiguri Development Authority (SJDA) formally handed over its perishable cargo unit at Bagdogra airport to officials of the AAI Cargo Logistics & Allied Services Company Limited (ACLASCL) here on Wednesday.

Bijay Chandra Barman, the SJDA chairman, handed over the infrastructure to Rahul Nandy, a regional manager of the company that is a subsidiary of the Airports Authority of India.

Sources said that on July 12, an agreement for using the infrastructure of perishable cargo in Bagdogra was signed between the state urban development department and officials of the company.

"We have officially handed over the infrastructure of perishable cargo to the ACLAS- CL. The agreement was signed in Calcutta," said Burman.

The facility, SJDA sources said, has been handed over to the company on a lease of 30 years. As per the agreement, the SJDA will receive 10 per cent of the total profit that the company will earn in a year by using the infrastructure.

The infrastructure was built by the SJDA in 2010. It had spent Rs 75 lakh to acquire a 3.91-acre plot and spent another Rs 6.68 crore to raise the depot.

However, the project turned out to be a non-starter as the SJDA could not get compliance certificates and licences from different authorities. The AAI expressed interest in using it as a general cargo depot as the scale of cargo movement has been on the rise at Bagdogra. Nandy said they would try to make it operational in