More than 1,000 deliverymen have been sent to Beijing by e-commerce platform JD.com on Wednesday, as the city is currently facing a shortage of delivery personnel. The aim is to ensure smooth delivery to customers in the capital city, where the number of new infections is increasing rapidly.
There has been a surge in demand in Beijing for deliveries of fresh food, drugs and epidemic prevention products.
One Beijing resident told the Global Times on Wednesday that she had been unable to order food delivery for three days, as the food delivery platform ele.me told her there were no deliverymen available.
Another Beijing resident surnamed Li told the Global Times that his family has been staying at home for about a week. They only go out to drop off garbage, and they order fresh vegetables, meat and milk online.
"You have to get up early and make an order. Otherwise, there will be no deliverymen," Li said.
The State Post Bureau (SPB) on Tuesday urged the Beijing Municipal Postal Administration and express delivery enterprises to deal with the backlog of express deliveries and the shortage of deliverymen as soon as possible, according to a post on the SPB website on Wednesday.
Enterprises have been encouraged to mobilize their nationwide resources and strengthen the allocation of materials and manpower, so as to solve the "last mile" problem, said the SPB.
Currently, the Beijing Postal Administration is actively supporting the existing 60,000 deliverymen in the city.
The administration is asking express enterprises to clear the existing express backlog within two days and make up the shortage of delivery personnel within a week, so as to basically meet the normal delivery needs of the city, the administration said on Wednesday, according to the Beijing Daily.
At present, the daily volume of express deliveries in China is more than 360 million items.
STO Express, for example, had more than 4,700 employees in total in Beijing by Wednesday, of which nearly 3,500 are front-line deliverymen, handling millions of express items every day.
This means that every deliveryman has to deliver at least 285 express parcels a day to ensure there is no overstock.
The company said it expects to resume normal operation in Beijing from Thursday, according to media reports.
JD.com also launched a "night delivery" mode, extending the delivery time. The 1,000 deliverymen sent to Beijing came from 16 provinces and cities in China, including Shanghai, South China's Guangdong Province, Northwest China's Shaanxi, Central China's Hunan, East China's Fujian, Southwest China's Sichuan and Northeast China's Heilongjiang. They will start delivery work from Thursday.
According to a notice seen by the Global Times posted on Alibaba's fresh food delivery platform Hema, it has started urgent recruitment for a large number of product sorters in 36 of its branches in Beijing. It said in another post that there is an adequate supply of daily necessities at Hema's stores.
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