With Punjab truckers protesting against less rates being offered this Rabi season for transportation of wheat and boycotting the tender process for the same, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Thursday said the Congress government is destroying the trucking industry in Punjab.

The SAD president, Sukhbir Singh Badal, said the Amarinder Singh government is using heavy-handed means to force truck unions to make draconian reductions in tender rates in contracts for wheat transportation.

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In a Press statement, the SAD president said it was shocking that despite start of wheat purchase on April 1, the government had still not completed the process of awarding tenders for transportation of procured wheat to appropriate godowns.

He said while this was affecting the livelihood of thousands of truckers with more than 70,000 trucks being used for this purpose, it would also effect farmers as failure to lift wheat from mandis would clog them and delay the procurement process.

Asking the government to talk to the truck unions and settle the imbroglio quickly, Badal said it was unfortunate that the government was using coercive methods to force the truckers to toe its dictatorial line.

“At least 80 per cent of the 70,000 odd trucks used to transport wheat and paddy during the biannual procurement season are self-owned. Moreover, the owners don’t ply them otherwise because they are old and cannot be used to long-haul carriage,” he said.

Stating that the government had done nothing for farmers and Dalits or created any new jobs for youth, he said it was now bent on snatching the livelihoods of those who were gainfully employed in the trucking business.

On Wednesday evening, the Punjab government had said that to ensure smooth and seamless lifting of wheat during current Rabi marketing season, tendering process of 340 clusters out of total 413 in the state for
transportation of wheat has been finalised.

A spokesperson of the food and civil supplies department said that 100 percent tenders had been finalised for the clusters in 11 districts – Amritsar, Barnala, Fazilka, Gurdaspur, Kapurthala, Muktsar, Mohali, Mansa, Pathankot, Rupnagar and SBS Nagar.

He said that the state was fully geared to accomplish this gigantic task of wheat lifting despite boycott by various truck unions across the state. The spokesperson said that the CM h had already given detailed directions to ensure hassle free procurement and lifting of wheat.