Bizodisha Bureau, Bhubaneswar, Jun 17, 2015 :

The Odisha Government will soon set a ceiling on mineral freight charges based on the recommendation of a technical committee. The price would be effective from July 1.

The decision in this regard was taken at a meeting chaired by the Chief Secretary Gokul Chandra Pati in the secretariat here o Wednesday.

“Considering the exorbitant amounts charged by truck owners for mineral freight in the state, a meeting was held by the Chief Secretary on May 15 to bring transparency and rationality in the charges. Today’s meeting was a follow up on it. The Chief Secretary reviewed the progress and the action taken on the resolutions pssed in that meeting,” said Deepak Mohanty, Director of Mines.

The collectors of Sundargarh, Keonjhar, Jajpur, Jagatsinghpur and Angul have been asked to provide their inputs to the Transport Department regarding the commercial transport freight charges before June 20.

“In today’s meeting, based on the findings of the earlier meet, we have decided to rationalise the freight charges and to impose a ceiling on the mineral freight charges on commercial transporters. The Transport Department has already written to the collectors of every district on this regard. So far, they have consulted with the RTO, SP and industry representatives to fix a ceiling rate for their district,” Mohanty added.

The chief secretary has asked the Commerce and Transport Department has been asked to share the feedback with the technical committee, which would take a decision based on the report of the collectors and set the price. The ceiling on mineral freight charges would be enforced strictly and license of the transporter would be cancelled if they charge more than the rates fixed.

It may be mentioned that the State Government is also registering the transport companies online. A new condition added to the terms and conditions asks them to agree that they won’t charge beyond the ceiling rate at the time of empanelment.