Kerala - Kochi   

Majority of quarries working without licences

KOCHI: In spite of the frequent accidents in stone quarries leading to deaths and maiming, majority of the roughly 10,000 quarries in the State continue to operate without proper licences.

Leaders of the Quarry Owners’ Association admit that hardly 10 per cent of the quarries have explosives licence.

The recent accident at Kuzhoor near Irapuram in which five workers lost their lives has revived the All-Kerala Stone Quarry Association’s demand for a single-window licensing procedure and the public’s as well as environmental activists’ call for stronger regulation of the quarrying business. (Kuzhoor quarry was licensed, the association leaders said).

“We are all ready to take the licence by paying the fee prescribed by the government,” an association functionary told The Hindu. “But, the officials do not want us to take the licence so that they can harass and squeeze money out of us,” he said.

In theory, the quarries require licences and approval from a slew of agencies—the explosives authorities of the Central government and the State government’s Revenue, Police, Mining and Geology Departments as well as the panchayats concerned and the Kerala State Pollution Control Board (PCB).

Normally, if every condition was complied with, it took nearly three years to get a licence. It was because of the cumbersome and archaic procedures that the quarry owners withdrew from obtaining licences, the owners said.

They said the government was fully aware that 90 per cent of the quarries were operating without the explosives licence.

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