Overloaded lorries roam with impunity

Ongole: A majority of the lorries that are transporting granite boulders and slate stone from Prakasam district are overloaded, posing a serious risk to the lives of both other travellers and the crew of the transport vehicles. Officials who catch these vehicles red-handed, let them off with a nominal fine.

Prakasam district is famous for its huge deposits of minerals like galaxy granite and slate stone. The companies which expert these minerals transport them in lorries to shipyards, polishing unit and to distant places like Rajasthan. The Mining and Geology department issues way bill and mining bill to the companies to export and transport the cut boulders from the quarry.

The department calculates the royalty on the basis of said weight of the boulder and permits the transport vehicle to carry it in the route mentioned in way bill to destination. As the process of way bills went online, the company pays the fees and prints the bills at its office and there is no need to weigh the cargo in the presence of officials.

A number of companies in the district are misusing this online facility and overloading the vehicle. There are also allegations that some companies are using the same way bill and mining bills for multiple vehicles and multiple trips. Lorries carrying cement from Piduguralla and Dachepalli in Gutnur district are alleged to have been resorting to these irregularities misusing online way bill system.

According to relevant laws, if a lorry was caught with overload of mineral, five times of the royalty to the value of stone should be collected and the licence of the driver should be suspended for three months. If the driver is caught for the second time, his licence would be suspended for six months and would be cancelled if caught for the third time.

The permit of the vehicle would also be cancelled if it was caught with overload three times by the authorities. The overloaded granite or slate stone vehicles would not have any protective gear to keep the boulder in place, giving scope for boulder slipping from the vehicle at any time, when the vehicle was speeding.

In January, boulders on a vehicle damaged the driver cabin, when the driver applied a sudden brake at Chimakurthy. Also, as the overloaded vehicles are causing damage to the roads, the NHAI ordered the toll plazas to not let them pass until the excess load is dropped from them. But no one is following these orders.

Sk Subhan Ali, a transport lorry driver said the companies insist on them to carry excess load to save on the royalty to be paid to the government. “Some weigh bridges issue bogus receipts with false weight. If any transport official inspects the vehicle, he could be easily managed with a bribe of Rs 15,000 to 20,000 per a load,” he said.

G Krishnaiah, Deputy Transport Commissioner of Prakasam district, said, “There are one or two instances understatement of load. If overload is proved at another weigh bridge, we impose fine. We observed that most of the overloading is of single blocks, which cannot be cut for export needs. We are checking almost all vehicles passing near bypass road, and have booked about 200 cases in the last few months and collected Rs 25 lakh as fine from them.”