Does Goa have 25,000 mining trucks?

GOANEWS DESK, PANAJI | 23 May 2013 21:25 IST

Are there really 25,000 mining trucks in Goa?

Even the mining truck owners’ associations dispute their own figures.

In a memorandum submitted to Goa mines secretary R K Verma, the Goa Mining People’s Front has claimed that Goa has 25,000 mining trucks, but only 9900 are registered for the purpose of compensation.

Even the loans of Rs 1200 crore they quote are only for 9900 trucks.

“Many government officers like police officers and even RTO officers had purchased mining trucks and have not registered in order not to get exposed”, discloses Suhas Naik, the GMPF convenor.

Adding to this, North Goa Truck Owners’ Association president Suresh Desai says there were also trucks coming from Karnataka and Maharashtra with iron ore, which are counted in this figures.

But they cannot explain how the figure of 9900 could swell nearly three times more – 25,000.

Desai himself informed at the GMPF press conference today that the transport department had registered total 18,800 trucks from 1961 to 2010 and 20,400 trucks till date.

This includes ALL the trucks, the old ones which no more exist as well as other trucks than mining.

None of the GMPF leader could answer how only the mining trucks are 25,000 when total number of trucks – used for all kind of activities - registered in last 52 years are 20,000.

Besides loans of Rs 1200 crore for the trucks, the GMPF has said 185 barge owners have a loan of Rs 365 crore and 228 mining machinery owners have loans of Rs 80 crore.

Besides this, the GMPF claims that 60,000 mining workers have their personal loans of around Rs two lakh each, which amounts to Rs 1200 crore.

The total loan amount calculated by the GMPF is thus Rs 2845 crore.

The GMPF has demanded that the state government should pursue the matter with the centre asking for relaxation and restructuring of the loan and instalments be deferred till mining is resumed.

While Goa government is planning to ask for a mining compensation package of Rs 3000 crore from the centre, the GMPF feels it should be minimum Rs 5000 crore. 


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Something is seriously wrong as far as the number of mining trucks are concerned.

How comes, different figures are quoted by different people?

One thing seems to be sure. Something fishy was going on all this time and many trucks which could be 'benami' (owned by some government officials) were in use. This needs to be investigated to find out the truth.

In any case, only those mining trucks which are registered should get compensation, if any. Others should be ignored as there seems to be something illegal about the remaining trucks and that is why these trucks have not been registered.

Both the figures of trucks i.e. 25,000 as well as 9,900 on the face of it looks unrealistic.

- Francisco, Goa | 24 th May 2013 11:40

 

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