Members of the Mangaluru Civil Contractors Association have threatened that they will go on an agitation if the district administration did not take steps in the next 10 days to make available sand for construction activities in the taluk.
Talking to reporters here on Saturday, association’s president Purushottam Kottari said that the district administration was dragging its feet over renewing licence for traditional extraction of sand from riverbeds in the coastal regulatory zone.
The COVID-19 situation has added to the delay. This has caused artificial scarcity of sand in the last few weeks, he said. The State government has also lost royalty, which is collected from licensees.
The artificial scarcity has brought construction activity to a halt, which has hit workers, contractors and others involved in the industry hard. Delay in the renewal of licence has led to illegal sand extraction and the district administration was not acting swiftly to curb it. Elected representatives were also silent on the hardship faced by those in the industry, he said.
The district administration should take steps in the next few days to make available sand at an affordable price, he added.
