BHUBANESWAR: In its bid to streamline mineral evacuation process, the Odisha government today decided to enforce a ceiling price on the transporartion of different minerals within the state from July 1.
“The state govenrment will fix a ceiling price on the transporation of mineral within the state. It will be enforced from July 1. The trasnport agencies or truck owners would be forced to accept the ceiling price,” said director of mines Deepak Mohanty after attending a meeting presided over by Chief Secretary G C Pati.
Mohaty said the government took this decision after realising that different mineral transporter make charges as per their whims which ultimately affected the price of ore due to high transportation price. “Now, the transporters can not go beyond a certain price,” Mohanty said.
Ahead of fixing the ceiling price on mineral transportation, chief secretary Pati asked the eollectors of Angul, Sundergarh, Keonjhar Jajpur and Jagatsingpur to decicde the the transportation cost in their respective areas. The district collectors will inform their price to the commerce and trasnport department.
“The state level technical committee will take the final decision on the ceiling price on mineral transportation,” Mohanty said.
Earlier on May 15, the state government had decided to introduce e-tendering process for smooth and trasnparent trasnportation of minerals from the pit heads to the end users.
The state owned Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC) was assigned to decide the modality for the e-tendering of the mineral transporation.
Prasanta Patnaik