Road transport & rly officials head for Darj to solve truckers’ stir crisis

Pramod Giri , HT, TINDHARIA, 21 Aug 2016: The Centre on Sunday will rush senior officials of the Union ministry for road transport and highways and the railways to Darjeeling to solve the ongoing crisis due to the truckers’ agitation backed by local residents.

The agitation — indefinite strike by truck drivers and indefinite hunger strike — demanding that the trucks be allowed to ply on the railway tracks near Tindharia entered its fourth day on Saturday.

This has resulted in a shortage of essential commodities in places like Darjeeling and Kurseong where prices have skyrocketed and petrol pumps are running dry. Even hotels are running short of water as the trucks and tankers carrying water have joined the agitation called by Darjeeling Truck Drivers’ Association (DTDA).

Perishable items loaded in hundreds of trucks which are stranded here for the last four days have started rotting.

On Saturday, SS Ahluwalia, Union minister of state for parliamentary affairs and agriculture, who is also the local MP, visited the agitators and requested to withdraw the indefinite hunger strike of DTDA. He on Friday wrote to Nitin Gadkari, Union minister for road transport and highways, and Suresh Prabhu, Union railway minister, and requested them to find a solution to the impasse as local people have been suffering for six years.

The situation was worsening as local residents and truck drivers were becoming angry as neither the railways nor the National Highway Authority had been able to find a solution.

Ahluwalia said that on Sunday he would hold a meeting in Darjeeling with the chief engineer of the National Highway Authority from Kolkata and the assistant general manager of the North East Frontier. The agitators would also attend the meeting in Darjeeling.

The first-ever joint agitation of truckers and local population has also brought to the fore a question: what is more important: providing relief to thousands of common people suffering for more than five years or saving the world heritage status of Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR) at the cost of the common people’s troubles.

National Highway 55 here is closed since September 28, 2011 after a major landslide washed out about a 100-metre portion of the road and DHR track just below the railway workshop. The PWD is yet to repair the road.

The closure of NH-55 for more than five years has put everyone in trouble. Many students have left their schools as their parents cannot afford to pay the transportation fare which has gone up by five times. Since then the trucks are taking a detour from risky routes leading to escalation of prices of essential commodities.

Fearing delisting from the world heritage site, the railways resumed the DHR services in February 2014 after laying down the railway track by cutting a portion of the workshop area.

Truckers are demanding the trucks be allowed to ply through the railway track.

Uma Shankar Singh Yadav, divisional railway manager of North East Frontier Railway, under which DHR falls, said, “If we allow the trucks to ply through the railway tracks the entire track would get washed out. In case the track gets washed out, the world heritage status of DHR might come under threat.”

DHR, which was accorded world heritage status in 1999, is already on the list of endangered heritage sites.

Meanwhile, the PWD division 9, custodian of National Highway 55, is putting the onus on the railways. “If the railways give permission to ply the trucks through the railway track, we will make the road in two to three days,” said Ajay Singh, PWD division 9 executive engineer.

Although the hunger strike was lifted on Ahluwalia’s request, the truckers’ indefinite strike would continue, said Hari Karki, Kurseong unit president of DTDA.