JOIN USThe office-bearers of the Association staged a protest in front of the DC’s office on Friday and submitted a memorandum to the Deputy Commissioner to be forwarded to the Chief Minister.
“The State government has introduced the new sand mining policy, in force from April 2011, following which the responsibility of sand mining was handed over to the Public Work Department, Port and Inland Water Transport Department. But due to shortage of staff in these departments road construction work has not been taken up. In such a situation these departments cannot afford to bear the responsibility of sand mining. The government has introduced the new sand mining policy on the lines of the policy existing in Tamil Nadu.
But one must understand that in Kodagu sand mining is not carried out using machines. Due to lack of information, the sand mining responsibility has been given to PWD. Earlier, lorry owners and the costumers used to get sand for low price as per the requirement, but now the government has been incurring crores of rupees loss in the royalty amount because of illegal sand mining,” complained the office bearers of the Association.
“Several private and government construction works have been stopped owing to the shortage of sand supply,” they said.