- I Paid A Bribe
- 10 years ago
- 5131 views
I used to pay Rs.17,000 per month initially in 2011 to Ongole, Prakasam…
I used to pay Rs.17,000 per month initially in 2011 to Ongole, Prakasam Dt, AP RTO office, As the time passed, now I am paying Rs.20,000 per month. They are bleeding me left and right :' (
There are about 500 transporters like me who need to pay through an agent on 9th or 10th of every month. This agent will coordinate with the RTO department. On 11th of every month, they print out a spreadsheet with the numbers of tippers for which a payment has been made and discreetly distribute to all RTO officers throughout the district.
I am a 10-tyre tipper owner from Chimakurthy. We transport stone crusher stones(20mm, 12mm, 6mm, dust) , i.e., kankara in telugu language , for roads and building construction. The reason is not only the officials to be blamed for it, but the customers.
Whenever, a customer places an order this is what they demand:
1. The customers expect me or my competitor to bring a "full tipper load" of material.
2. They don't want to pay taxes on the "kankar stone material" they purchased.
No matter how much I tried to educate my customers on the rules of material transportation, they do not care. Here are the rules:
(a) A 10-tyre tipper is allowed to carry only 16 tonnes of material on public roads.
----But, customers say "deliver me fully loaded tippers only", it weighs nearly 30 tonnes, which is twice the legal limit. The reason why customers do this is because, instead of paying for 2 trips of the same material they get to pay only for 1 trip. Also, psychologically, they feel that if the tipper is not delivered full, they feel they are being cheated and ask us to either not to unload the material and leave the premises or not pay the dues.
(b) Customers dont feel that they need to pay for taxes, even though it is something they can claim back from the government.
----since, most of the customers do not want to reveal to the government how much it cost them to build their house/apartment, they feel it is a burden for them to pay taxes on kankara stone material.
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So, the Government officials think that they are doing a favor to us by allowing these tippers, and charge us for taking risk in their job.
So, whenever a RTO officer stops the vehicle, he cross it against the spreadsheet he has. If my tipper number is listed there among the paid transports, he will let go of the vehicle. Otherwise, they confiscate the vehicle and fine you for a minimum or Rs20,000/-
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I strongly feel that once the Govt officials put their foot down and stop this type of transport, people will soon learn about the rules of transportation. This will save our roads to survive longer and decrease the accidents/fatalities due to bad roads