Woes on wheels
Shillong, Aug. 18 : A transportation hurdle in Assam is depriving Meghalaya’s poverty line population of its monthly quota of rice and ration.
Assam contractors are refusing to ferry rice to Meghalaya from the Food Corporation of India godown in Guwahati, with the Supreme Court’s restriction on load per truck denting their profit margin.
The FCI has a monthly arrangement with transporters by which a fixed amount is paid for the trips made to Meghalaya.
With the apex court stipulating that only nine metric tonnes of rice can be carried by trucks, the transporters are being forced to increase the number of trips, consequently pushing up costs — a fact that is overlooked by FCI while fixing the transportation rate.
As the number of Assam trucks thins along the border, impoverished Meghalaya villages hold empty plates.
The worst affected are the remote Garo Hills districts.
“With the carriage contractors in Assam refusing to lift the public distribution system rice, we could not lift the rice quota for the above poverty line category for July,” East Garo Hills deputy commissioner Pravin Bakshi said.
The statewise allocation of rice under Antyodaya Anna Yojana, below pov- erty line and above pove- rty line schemes first reaches the FCI godown in Amingaon, Guwahati.
From there, the trucks carry the rice to FCI godowns in the rest of the Northeast.
The recent fuel hike, coupled with limited transport subsidy prompted the carriage contractors to express their inability to lift the public distribution system rice from Guwahati.
According to the contractors, they will suffer huge losses if they increase the number of trips to godowns of Meghalaya and other Northeast states carrying the stipulated nine tonnes of rice.
As the standoff continues, the Meghalaya government decided to send wholesalers from the state to lift rice directly from the godown in Guwahati.
The Meghalaya commissioner and secretary of food and civil supplies, P.W. Ingty, today said that after transporters from Assam refused to lift rice, the state government requisitioned trucks that are being sent to Guwahati.
But that is a tardy process, Ingty said, adding that the government is making efforts to tide over the crisis.
Adding to the trouble is the plight of the truckers in Garo Hills which are also having to adhere to the norm of carrying only nine tonnes of coal, as opposed to the earlier stipulation of 15 tonnes.
The trucks offload coal in Goalpara in Assam after crossing National Highway 62 in East Garo Hills.
The government had allowed 15 metric tonnes of coal after truckers were found to be transporting around 25 tonnes, way beyond the permissible limit.
Though the Supreme Court order was passed in 2005, the recent direction of the state transport as well as the civil supplies department came to avoid a contempt of court case.
An official source today said that following certain complaints, the Assam transport department directed the Meghalaya transport department officials to ensure that trucks from Meghalaya carry only nine tonnes of coal.
