TUESDAY, MAY 14, 2024
Team Herald
PANJIM: The NGO Goa Foundation has extended its support to the truck owner’s demand for increase in iron ore transportation price from existing Rs 12 per tonne per km to Rs 25 per tonne per km.
In a press statement issued on Tuesday, Goa Foundation Director Claude Alvares said considering the four million tonnes of ore lying at various mining sites, to be transported till January 31, 2021, the truck owners at the rate of Rs 25 per tonne per km, will earn Rs 200 crore.
Alvares said that the transportation of four million tonnes of ore, with an average distance of 20 kms, at current rate of Rs 12 per tonne per km, will fetch only Rs 96 crore to the truck owners.
Alvares said that if the State had to auction all the four million tonnes of ore, as demanded by the Foundation, the State would have receive Rs 1,022 crore (four million tonnes x Rs 2,555 / tonne) at today’s prices.
“Instead, as the State has eagerly handed over the minerals to their friends and cronies in the mining industry, it will only receive royalty of Rs 153 crore from the disposal of the four million tonnes,” he said. “Loss to Goans, and Goa’s exchequer, a gift to illegal miners is Rs 717 crore,” he added.
Alvares said that the truckers are demanding is a share of the “gift” given by the government to the miners.
