The Keonjhar Truck Owners’ Core Committee handed over a memorandum to the district Collector, Keonjhar against the transporting of iron ore by trawlers of outside Odisha and demanded priority to local truck owners in the transportation of ore.
Joda Truck Owners’ Association secretary Sushanta Kumar Barik said local educated unemployed youths are maintaining their families by engaging trucks in the local mines of Keonjhar district and along with them, lakhs of family members of truck operators and local shop keepers are also dependent on truck business but the recent introduction of transportation of ore by trawler has hit the business of local truck operators.
As the mines owners like State-owned OMC, Guali and others like JSW, Nuagan and KNRam are giving preference to trawlers having capacity of carrying 60 tonnes of material to transport their ore instead of the local trucks, the ore loading by local trucks has come down drastically.
As far as local trucks are concerned, they are made to wait for days together for a single loading. For this reason, the local truck owners are now rendered jobless.
Many of them apprehended that if the situation continued further, their financial condition would deteriorate and the property which they had mortgaged for getting loan to purchase trucks would be auctioned by the banks as they wouldn't be able to pay off loan.
They further alleged that in the year 2012, the mines owners had signed an agreement with the Government as per which they would give a certain percentage of the ore for transportation to local trucks. But the permission to transport ore by trawler has led to the violation of the agreement. The committee members met BJD State organising secretary Pranab Prakash Das, who is said to have assured them to look into the matter.