These heavy vehicles zoom through the roads in the district touching Guntakal, Gooty and Uravakonda national and State highways virtually damaging the roads, polluting the atmosphere and many lost their lives following road accidents caused by negligent driving.

During the past one-and-half year about 100 people were killed in accidents involving the iron ore lorries. A cavalcade of some 5,000 heavy vehicles carrying lakhs of tones of iron ore each day pass through the towns causing air pollution, damaging the poor quality roads and even the green paddy fields which are adversely effected by the iron ore dust.

The iron dust contribute liberally to respiratory diseases and also affect the quality of drinking water . Indignant people had for quite sometime been agitating against the vehicles passing through the mini-towns and densely populated areas.

The roads according to local people are not strong enough to absorb the weight of the lorries carrying about 70 tonnes of iron ore each. This is not a single day exercise and the heavy vehicular movement was badly damaging the roads.

Even the Jindal steel plant at Bellary too uses the same roads to transport their steel products to the Krishnapatnam port in Nellore district.

Protest today

Ex-MP Kalava Sreenivas told The Hindu that the Telugu Desam party and the CPI is organising a 24-hour road blockade at Donekal near Guntakal on the Kurnool border and also at Vidapanakallu and at Uravakonda and other by-pass roads on July 16. There will be a virtual blockade of thousands of lorries and other motor vehicles on the National and State highways. In the past iron ore used to be transported through Railway wagons but the mining contractors chose to send their stocks by road. Sreenivas stated that they chose the road route only to camouflage their illegal over-exploitation of ore . Transportation by Railways means accounting for the quantum of ore exploited. The people are urging the authorities for diversion of the heavy vehicles by creating by-pass roads.