Dakshina Kannada Deputy Commissioner A.B. Ibrahim on Tuesday directed the officials concerned to arrange closure/fencing of open red stone quarries in the district immediately.
He released Rs. 22 lakh from the corpus fund towards fencing of quarries located on government land and land belonging to people with below the poverty line (BPL) cards.
Mr. Ibrahim directed tahsildars to issue notices to quarry owners asking them to fence the quarries within a week. He was chairing a meeting on the issue here.
As many as 507 quarries in the district have remained without any external boundary wall or fence, while 172 have been closed down and 179 have been fenced, Deputy Director of Mines of Geology N. Ramappa said.
In Bantwal taluk, there are 210 quarries, out of which 16 have been closed down and 13 have been fenced; Belthangady taluk has 72 quarries out of which 42 are closed and 22 have been fenced; out of 382 quarries in Mangaluru taluk, 19 have been closed and 93 have been fenced; Puttur taluk has 145 quarries out of which 68 are closed and five have been fenced, while Sullia taluk has 49 quarries out of which 28 are closed and 21 need to be fenced, Mr. Ramappa said.
Zilla Panchayat chief executive officer I.P. Srividya, additional DC Sadashiva Prabhu were among those present.
