Members of CREDAI’s city chapter urged the government to revert to the auction system of sand in order to tide over the downturn prevailing in the construction sector.
Addressing a press conference, chapter president B. Srinivasa Rao and honorary secretary V. Dharmender said that there was an acute scarcity of sand, with prices shooting through the roof despite despite the best intentions of the State government.
With only 10 or 15 truckloads of sand available per day against a demand of 200 truckloads, construction activity has come to a standstill in the city, the representatives said. Sand is now being sold on the black market and owing to lack of work, labourers are migrating to neighbouring States of Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, Mr. Srinivasa Rao said. Sand availability was a problem in other districts like Guntur, Kurnool and East Godavari too but is most acute in Visakhapatnam as the district has no major rivers or sand reaches, the members said.
The price for a truckload of sand (24 tonnes) was ₹12,000 when sand reaches were auctioned. During the free sand policy, the price shot up to ₹18,000. But owing to limited availability, a truckload of sand now costs anywhere between ₹50,000 and ₹70,000, they said.
Reverting to auctioning of sand reaches would limit the government’s job to monitoring whether royalty was being paid and if environmental norms prescribed by statutory bodies such as the National Green Tribunal were being adhered to, the representatives said.
“Now, the government has to monitor the sand supply at various levels including tracking of vehicles by GPS and setting up CCTV cameras at stockyards. Even while going in for auction, the government should fix an upper ceiling to prevent undue exploitation of the situation,” Mr. Srinivasa Rao said.
The government should also consider obtaining sand from surplus, neighbouring States similar to how electricity is purchased, he said.
Alternatively, the government should also think of mining sand from the river and making it available at the reaches, leaving transportation to other players, Mr. Srinivasa Rao suggested.
