Sand prices reach unaffordable levels
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The shortage of sand has left many workers jobless. SHYAMA RAJAGOPAL says the builders adopt a wait-and-watch approach.
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In short supply: With the High Court order to stop all private retail channels of sand, there appears to be a shortage of this building material.
The shortage of sand has pushed up its price to a level unaffordable to the common man in Ernakulam district. A load of quality sand costs anywhere upwards of Rs.6,500. There are some who demand even Rs.80 a cubic foot of this building material.
Since the Kerala High Court has ordered that there be no private retail sale of sand and people buy it from the government-run Kalavaras (godowns) in the district, there appears to be a shortage.
While the High Court’s intention was to check rampant sand-mining and the district administration has issued orders to all panchayats where river sand is mined to sell sand according to the priority list with respect to building permits granted to people, middlemen continue to sell sand.
Sources in the construction sector say that many more people have come in between a load of sand and the end user.
The material that should be available in the range of Rs.25-30 a cubic foot is selling at such a high price because there are many layers of payments to be made, a building contractor says.
“We have not yet approached for a permit to buy sand, but the material is being made available at a higher rate,” he says.
“It also depends on the quality of sand. The sand from Kalady gets the best rate, while that from Vaikom is available cheaper.”
The shortage has hit the workers hard. At many construction sites, the number of workers has gone down by almost half.
Those handling sand and doing plastering have been sent back without work. Concreting and brickwork is going on since M-sand is used for such work. Even this sand has become costly over the past one month because of the prevailing shortage of river sand.
The workers under the Ernakulam District Construction and General Workers’ Union recently took out a march to the Kanayannur taluk office demanding a solution to loss of work at construction sites and the lifting of the ban on sand-mining.
The builders are in a wait-and-watch mode.
“It has to resolve by itself,” says Abdul Azeez, chairman of the Kerala chapter of the Confederation of Real Estate Developers’ Association of India (CREDAI). The artificial shortage is going to hit the public harder, he adds. “We will be taking up the issue next week if the problem does not resolve by that time,” he says.
The District Collector has said that within a week, the panchayats that have sand will be able to sell the required number of legally permitted loads.
Since the district administration issued the order to panchayats to receive applications from consumers and to start sale of sand from the kadavus (ghats) where the sand is mined, Piravom is, perhaps, one of panchayats that started the process the next day.
The panchayat has four kadavus and 60 loads of sand are mined every day.
K.P. Salim, panchayat president, says that the local body already has a system that operates in manner that the District Collector had ordered. “So, we could start the very next day itself. We have 40 lorries registered with the panchayat and their numbers have been published too. We get 60-70 applications a day that includes applications from neighbouring panchayats. We supply sand to 10 of our neighbouring panchayats where there is no river-sand-mining. These panchayats also give us a priority list of the demand,” Mr. Salim says.
C.P. George, Leader of the Opposition in the Kalady panchayat and in-charge of sand sale, says that the local body has received 200 applications for sand. It will soon start sale from four kadavus where 40 loads will be sold.
Muvattupuzha municipal chairperson Mary George says that the civic body will soon set up a system for sand sale at their four kadavus. Right now, only ten loads of sand are being sold.
There is no short-term measure for solving the problem of sand, says Antony Kunnel, secretary of CREDAI, Kochi. River sand is being mined for centuries, but the problem has come up with increasing construction work in the past decade or so. The government has not yet provided any alternative in solving this issue. But the industry is ready, he says.
“We have proposed a long-term measure for which we hope to get government support as well,” he says.
Partnership
The builders are ready to invest in a public-private partnership project for M-sand.
There are also proposals for getting sand from Gujarat and neighbouring States. The sand from Gujarat is said to be available at Rs.42 a cubic foot, affordable to the builder and the individual.
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