PANJIM: Goa Foundation, the petitioner before the Supreme Court in the illegal mining case, alleged on Saturday that truckers will suffer a loss of Rs 2.6 crore on transportation of 15 million tonnes of e-auctioned ore due to a computation error by the Directorate of Mines and Geology (DMG).
The Foundation raised the issue before the department in March, however, it failed to correct the errors. Till date, 8 million tonnes of ore have been auctioned.
“In transporting 15 million tonnes of ore – which are subject to e-auction – the truckers collectively stood to lose a staggering Rs 2.6 crore due to a simple computation error by the Mines Department in working out the transportation rate,” Goa Foundation’s Director Claude Alvares told media persons.
Alvares pointed out that on April 20, 2015, the DMG had notified the rate of transportation of e-auctioned ore after a representation was made by the truckers association. “Pursuant to this, the Government of Goa declared the rate of transportation of order per tonne km for tippers of 10 tonnes. A significant error in the notified order was not noticed for nearly a year,” he alleged.
Explaining in detail, Alvares said that working on the rate of diesel at that time of Rs 52 per litre, which came to 28 percent of the total cost of the trip, it is concluded that the rate should be Rs 12.40 per tonne km, whereas the DMG had calculated it at Rs 12.33 per tonne km.
“We, from the very inception of the mining crisis, claimed that of the three main investors in mining –trucking industry, the barge industry and the mining lease holders – the truckers made the maximum investment, the barge owners made the second largest investment and the mining companies made the least significant investment in the industry,” he said
“Despite this, the trucking industry paid the heaviest price for five years of illegal mining done by the leaseholders,” Alvares added.
Goa Foundation alleged that the Mines Ddepartment does not have any competent officers at the moment who can deal with the issues of resource costing.
