Bhubaneswar: In a bid to streamline mining activities in Orissa, the state government Saturday said global positioning system (GPS) tracking devices will be installed in trucks carrying minerals by December 28.
‘‘GPS tracking devices will be installed in the trucks used for mineral transportation. We will track movements of trucks from the mineral source to the destination point. The GPS equipment would be installed by December 28,’’ said mines director Deepak Mohanty.
“We have asked truck owners to install GPS in their vehicles. Otherwise, their vehicles will not be allowed to transport minerals,” Mohanty said here Saturday.
A web-based software has been developed to monitor the movement of vehicles along with the Geo-fenced permitted routes through GPS devices installed in vehicles. The software would be integrated with i3MS soon, he said.
The state government has identified five vendors to install and maintain GPS in trucks and other mineral carrying vehicles.
Since 2011, Orissa has taken a lead in real time monitoring system called Integrated Mines and Mineral Management System (i3MS).
Mohanty revealed this after attending a meeting of state-level task force on mining held under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi. It was decided to convey the decisions of the meeting of task force every six months instead of every quarter. The district-level task force meetings would be held every two months.
“Strict enforcement activities will be carried out to check air pollution due to mining. The government has set up air quality monitoring systems in three mines. It will also install such systems soon in two other highly polluting mines,” he said.
Besides, the pollution control board has been installing air ambient quality monitoring systems in 34 locations outside the leasehold areas to check air pollution during mineral transportation. While such systems have already been installed at 11 locations, the systems would be set up at other places within a month, the director indicated.
‘‘If we find that air pollution level is more than that of tolerable level, we will stop transportation from the concerned mining area, till the pollution level came down to normal,” he pointed out.
The Chief Secretary directed the steel and mines department authorities to develop Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS) for regular satellite checking of mining activities at the ground level.
