Chandigarh: The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) today said the Congress government was depriving poor truckers of their livelihood by reducing wheat transportation rates even as it was effecting as much as 100 per cent increase in labour contract rates for the present procurement season which were being bagged by Congress leaders.
In a statement here, SAD spokesman Parambans Singh Romana said the government was threatening truckers with draconian measures including invoking ESMA to force truckers to reduce their tender rates by forty to fifty per cent. He said 80 per cent of the truckers in Punjab had single trucks and they were used mostly for procurement purpose only as they were old and could not travel long distances. “It is these truckers who are set to lose their livelihood with the Congress government becoming adamant on reducing their transportation rates by forty to fifty percent”.
Romana said even as the government was forcing poor truckers to sell their vehicles and lose their means of livelihood, it had agreed to substantial increase in labour contracts, at places as much as 100 percent, to please its own leaders who were behind most of the labour contracts awarded during the present procurement season. He said the situation was such that in Faridkot one Vijay Cooperative Society which was backed by a Congress MP had been awarded labour contract at a 115 per cent increase. “This was done despite the fact that the Faridkot Palledar Cooperative Society had filed tender at a one per cent increase. The contract was not awarded to the Palledar Society despite all its documents being found in order”.
Asking the government to save money by breaking the cartels being formed by Congress leaders to usurp labour contracts at steep hikes, Parambans Romana said the governing should simultaneously give relief to truckers who were being forced out of the tendering process due to imposition of rate cap in the new transportation policy.