PONDA | Nov 30, 2015: The All Goa Truck Owners' Association (AGTOA) has unanimously decided to keep its vehicles off-road indefinitely from today to protest the low ore-transportation rate offered by mining companies.

Mining companies are presently offering the truckers Rs 8 per kilometre per tonne, while the government had notified a rate of Rs 12.33.

The decision was taken at a two-hour meeting attended by a large number of truck owners at the Dhareswari Hall, Darbandora on Sunday.

Addressing the gathering, AGTOA president Nilkant Gawas said that truck owners had suffered a lot due to the mining closure; they spent a lot of money repairing and getting their trucks in peak condition. He added that the truckers had decided to start ore transportation after government intervention, but Vedanta was not offering them the rate fixed by the government.

Criticized the exploitation of truckers by Vedanta, AGTOA demanded that mining companies set the transportation rate at Rs 12.33 for e-auctioned ore and Rs 17.63 for regular ore. It also appealed to Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar to resolve the issue in the interest of the truck owners.

The truck owners also passed three other resolutions: to ask mining companies for a proper account of the number of trips made by them; to submit a memorandum to the CM and Mines Department informing about their strike; and not to vote for the MLAs from the mining belt in 2017 assembly election as they were not bothered about resolving the truckers' issues.

Some truck owners also read out a resolution passed at the Savordem gram sabha on Sunday to stop ore tranportation from Monday.

(Source: http://www.heraldgoa.in/)