[Global Times] Shanghai builds courier stations supporting delivery personnel

A delivery man delivers goods in Shanghai on April 10, 2022. Photo: VCG

Shanghai has been making efforts to improve the living conditions of delivery personnel as they have played an important role in keeping the city's logistics running in a smooth manner, following reports that some of them have been facing difficulties to live and eat well.

The city of 25 million people on Friday registered 2,736 confirmed locally transmitted COVID-19 cases and 20,634 local asymptomatic infections, the municipal health commission said on Saturday. The city's epidemic situation is still at a crucial stage, the authorities said as the city on Friday reported 12 more senior COVID-19 patient deaths, adding to a total number of 48.

In order to ensure the city's logistics, delivery personnel have been working hard to deliver daily commodities to those residents who are under closed-loop management.

In Shanghai's Changning district alone, there are 1,073 delivery personnel who are working hard each day. The district has built 18 temporary "courier stations" which were converted from hotels, cultural facilities and enterprises zones, for the delivery personnel to live and undertake closed-loop management, Yang Yuanfei, vice head of the district, said at Saturday's press briefing.

It has carried out the policy to let more delivery personnel who meet the epidemic preventive and control measures return to work soon, aiming to improve the transportation capacity.  

The district also opened green channels for delivery personnel to take nucleic acid tests faster such as reducing the time to line up and receive results. Meanwhile, stricter measures have also been conducted to ensure e-commerce platforms to implement related preventive measures including COVID-19 test, personal prevention and environment disinfection, Yang said.

The authorities will check out the COVID-19 test results every day from 10 percent of the working staff on duty daily, as a way to keep both delivery personnel and citizens' safety, according to Yang.

A deliveryman from JD.com told the Global Times on the condition of anonymity that the company has arranged places for them to have a rest every day. What he needs to do is to follow the preventive and control measures including taking nucleic acid tests.

Another deliveryman who drove a vehicle to help delivering goods told the Global Times that the restrictive measures have become stricter about two days ago. "I took nucleic acid test every day and the working staff would check out during transportation," he said, noting that he has suspended delivery as he doesn't have a logistic delivery pass.

The city has been pushing forward the work to build a white list of enterprises with the qualification of delivery business, and the enterprises can report to their supervisors dynamically about the list of the working staffs who are allowed to be engaged in distribution delivery business, according to the municipal authorities.