The company on Thursday (27th May) confirmed its efforts to help the ongoing fight against India’s second wave of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, through which the country’s medical infrastructure has been put under a lot of strain.
Commenting on the company’s efforts, Vikash Agarwal, Managing Director at Maersk South Asia, said, “The Covid-19 pandemic has taught us several lessons – empathy being one of the most important ones of them all. The crisis has urged us all to go beyond our business and support the society when it needs it the most.”
“15 of our top executives from different functions voluntarily got together in the early days of the second wave and put together ‘Project Oxygen War Room’, or POWR as they called it, to help society fight the virus.”
“The team went far beyond their day-to-day jobs to create a platform for buyers to meet sellers and implemented logistics for the medical aid coming into India. They worked relentlessly to put everything into action – from enabling charter planes to rapid clearances of emergency cargo to setting up visibility dashboards for transparency across different stakeholders involved in the transportation of the goods.”
During the efforts, Maersk offered its ocean transportation service to institutions and organisations participating in medical relief at a nominal rate of $1 per container. All commercial air freight shipments facilitated by Maersk India are being done on a zero-profit basis.
The logistics activities undertaken by Maersk in order to support the medical aid into the country involve facilitating shipments coming in from countries such as Ireland, Finland, China, Germany, U.A.E., Qatar, Israel, South Africa and Singapore with more shipments from China, Turkey and Dammam still in progress.
Arvind Ambo, Head of Chemicals Vertical, Maersk South Asia and Project Leader for supporting the medical aid coming into India remarked, “The last 5 weeks have been the perfect opportunity for us at Maersk to make an impact along our core value of ‘Constant Care’.”
“We are putting together the most complex pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in order to support the Indian society. The situation in India has led a lot of organisations that are not well-versed with the complexities of global supply chains to take up this humanitarian task and it was our goal to handhold them through this journey.”