Inland waters unable to take load of 100 more mines: MPT

PTI, PANAJI | 05 April 2010 11:38 IST

Even as Goa is set to open 100 more mining leases, state’s port trust authorities have said that the inland waterways are not in a position to handle any more ore transportation.

"If there are 100 more mines, what we have to look is whether waterways are able to handle such traffic. The waterways have reached a saturation point," Mormugao Port Trust Chairman Praveen Agarwal told a press conference today.
 
"Unless waterways are developed, it will not be able to increase the capacity," he added.
 
Goa, which exports almost 35 per cent of country's iron ore, uses inland waterways to carry ore from various mining sites to Mormugao Port Trust, where it is uploaded in the transshipers.
 
The MPT has handled 40.32 Metric tones of Iron ore and Iron ore pellets for Financial Year 2009-10 as against 33.81 MT for FY 2008-09. The port trust has 76 exporters listed with it.
 
Agarwal admitted that although huge amount of iron ore is regularly exported through the port, there is no mechanism to verify whether the ore sent is from legal or illegal mines.
 
"We don't have mechanism to cross check the source of ore but we have been passing on the entire information about export to the state government and customs," the chairman said.
 
A rough estimates projects that around 10 MT illegally extracted iron ore is exported from Goa. But MPT said that it is for the state government to tally the legal ore extracted and exports so as to find out illegality.
 
Agarwal said that the in recent times, the exports of iron ore to China have gone up substantially because of the dramatic increase in steel production by Chinese steel Mills.
 
He said that currently high level of exports of iron ore are fines, due to variety of reasons, the main being non availability of adequate steel making and agglomeration capacity in India and secondly due to high prices of iron ore in the international market. 

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As usual the resources collected from the common man in form of various taxes will be diverted to improve the waterways for the benefit of a few as is done in case of roads in the mining area! It is surprising as to how this open day light loot is going on in form of illegal mining when there are so many Govt. agencies whose job is to curb such illegal activities! How is that the judicial system too is not taking suo motto cognizance of this irregularity and fix the responsibility and recover the loss to public exchequer?

- vishwas prabhudesai, loliem | 09 th April 2010 07:01