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R.Y. Narayanan

Coimbatore , Nov. 13

THE Supreme Court order asking some of the State Governments to withdraw the notifications issued to condone the offence of overloading of transport vehicles has come as a shot-in-the-arm to the State Lorry Owners' Federation-Tamilnadu (SLOF-T) that has been running a sustained campaign to put an end to the overloading problem.The federation plans to take the apex court's judgment to the notice of the Tamil Nadu Government seeking stringent implementation of the Motor Vehicles Act and not to extend a kid-glove treatment to the erring operators by levying a fine.

Speaking to Business Line from Namakkal, Mr P. Sengodan, President, SLOF-T, said his association has been running a campaign since last month to bring to book lorries that were carrying excess load by involving the Motor Vehicles Department staff and the respective lorry owners' associations' members.

He said this exercise was conducted mostly along the national highways in the State and around 300-400 trucks that carried more than the permitted load for the vehicles concerned were caught.

But he regretted that the department authorities let off the lorry crew after levying a fine. This only made the errant drivers and others involved in overloading of vehicles, including those who hired the vehicles for transporting goods, to continue with their violations since the penalty levied was paltry compared to the revenue earned by them. The authorities levied penalty ranging from Rs 2,000 to Rs 5,000 depending on the excess load carried.

Mr Sengodan said the overloading menace was particularly rampant in the northern and western States such as Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan. While the lorries could carry loads up to 16 tonnes, many of them were found to be carrying three times that load. He made a particular reference to lorries carrying marble slabs from Rajasthan to Tamil Nadu traversing through many States and each State allowing the overloaded vehicles to cross their State after paying a fine.

The problems caused by overloading were many, affecting not only the transport sector but also other vehicle users. Due to vehicles carrying three times the permitted load, there was a longer wait for trucks to get loads and the scramble among vehicles for loads led to under-cutting of freight rates. This affected the economy of operations.

He said the excess load also caused damage to the roads and the vehicle's operational costs went up due to frequent breakdowns. Other vehicle users were also affected due to the poor conditions of roads.The accident rate also was higher.

According to him, nearly 10 per cent of the trucks operating in the country might be indulging in overloading but this wrought a heavy damage on the road infrastructure apart from undermining the profitability of transport operations.

He said even in 2002, his association had obtained an order from the High Court at Chennai against overloading of vehicles but the authorities did not take measures stringent enough to put an end to this practice. He demanded that excess goods should be offloaded at the checking point itself to serve as a deterrent not only to the vehicle owners but also to those who booked the goods.

He said SLOF-T wanted the State Government to take action against sand lorries that carried four units of sand against the permitted two units, damaging roads and bridges.

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