Team Herald
PANJIM: Thousands of truck drivers rode on two-wheelers along the streets of Panjim on Wednesday and later held a public meeting to highlight the government’s inability to grant them sums as promised in the mining packages that had been announced.
The drivers, owing allegiance to the All Goa Truck Drivers’ Union, demanded that the government give each driver affected by the closure of mining operations in the State at least Rs 2.5 lakh of the originally promised Rs 5 lakh. The union had fixed the deadline for the grant before Ganesh Chaturthi and with the festival approaching, drivers questioned whether the amount will reach them.
Speaking for the drivers, union leader and Shiv Sena representative in Goa Ajeetsingh Rane said, “Today was just a preview of a bigger protest we are planning. Every successive government has laid claim to development that is actually achieved because of workers and the labour community.”
He said that today there are around 9,000 truck drivers that had no money to celebrate Ganesh Chaturthi and that despite being the lifeline to the industry they were not being given due credit.
He said that Rs 2.5 lakh was a practical amount that could be delivered instead of the promised Rs 5 lakh. “The package should not be given to them out of pity but by looking at it as a right,” he added.
Rane also said the government had failed in constituting a recruitment policy in the State leading to differences in earnings among people holding the same positions. “There are persons earning Rs 50,000 and another person working in the same position is earning only Rs 5,000,” he said.
