Lack of coordination fueling artificial shortage of sand and aggregates

KATHMANDU, Aug 28:

Close to zero supply of sand and aggregates in Kathmandu Valley for over a month has led to construction work in the public sector as well as of individual houses to almost stall, even some important construction work started for the upcoming SAARC summit has halted.

Crusher plants with enough stock have created an artificial shortage and are pressing the government to slacken standards and a mandatory provision that makes them keeps records of each product in their plants. Consumers have been forced head to the black market where they have been paying over 500 percent more.

Kiran Panthi from Sanepal, Lalitpur, on Sunday registered a complaint at Hello Sarkar, a nodal agency for addressing public complaints, asking for control of black marketing of construction materials and reported that traders in Naikap and Kalanki had demanded Rs 25,000 for a tipper-load of aggregates. The market price used to be only Rs 5,000 per tipper-load.

Panthi lamented that her complaints have not been addressed yet and no one has enquired about the black marketing. She is waiting for the supply of aggregates to come back to normal before starting construction of her house in Naikap.

It may be surprising that officials responsible to ease the supply, stop hoarding and black marketing have remained silent and show sheer lack of coordination to smoothen the supply.

Local Development Officer of Kathmandu Tirtha Raj Bhatta, who is also a member of the district monitoring committee, said that he has no data on sand and aggregates and there are no crusher plants in the district.

Kavre is one of the major supplier districts of construction material to the Valley and here is what officials of Kavre had to say.

Talking to Republica over phone, Kavre Chief District Officer Kedar Neuapne on Tuesday said that there was no shortage of construction material in Kavre but he had no idea about Kathmandu. Neuapne was yet to report to the Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development by Thursday evening, even though he had been asked to report the updated stock in his district by Tuesday evening.

Stock of processed and non-processed sand and aggregates are about total 2.25 million cubic meters in 17 districts alone.

Another report compiled in June had said that there was enough stock to last nine months.

The standards implemented from the first day of this fiscal year says that mechanized plants have to be at a distance of over 500 meters from highways, rivers and streams; over 2 km from religious, historical sites and schools, forests; and more than a 100 meters from high-tension electricity lines.

Crusher operators have been piling pressure on the government to revoke the standards saying that no crusher plant can comply with the standards and have asked the government to allow the crushing raw materials at their current locations until mid-January, the deadline the crushers failing to meet the standards have been given to clear their stock.

Sitaram Neupane, the general secretary of the Federation of Crusher Entrepreneurs, said the standards are not practical and that they have raw material but cannot produce as they are illegal and even cannot issue VAT bills to supply their stock of finished products.

Shanta Raj Subedi, secretary at the Office of the Prime Minister and the Council of Ministers, said there was no alternative to the standards. Santosh Mani Nepal, an erstwhile advisor to the legislature-parliament committee on Natural Resources and Means, said natural resources are an asset of the state and standards are essential to control the environmental impact on forests, rivers and human settlements and to make transactions transparent.

GOVT EARNS PEANUTS

Crusher companies pay up to Rs 3.5 (including VAT) per square feet of raw material and the total earning of 36 district development committees allowing crushers to operate stood at a little over Rs 1 billion in the last fiscal year. Revenue was far lower in previous years.

Ramesh KC, under-secretary at the Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development, said what the crusher plants pay revenue is peanuts by declaring that they will only excavate an amount defined by Initial Environmental Examination as extractable raw materials in advance but haphazard resource exploitation persisted and there was no record on how much they had extracted from a specified area.

With the new standards in place, crusher operators will have to pay taxes upon verification of raw material by an officer from the local government and so the crusher operators can no more exploit resources by evading tax and extracting at will.

There are about 600 crusher plants of different types registered and only 350 are in operation.

Bishnu Timalsina, the executive director of the Forum for Protection of Consumers Rights, revealed that crusher operators´ hidden agenda is to shun monitoring by the local government as the provision managed to keep record about the quarries.

Timalsina also blamed crushers for instigating transportation laborers to come to streets and protest against the government. Consumer rights groups still fear the government will kneel down before the crusher operators resulting in policy corruption.

13 QUARRIES ON CARDS

The government has given alternatives to crusher plants -- shift their plants to new locations that comply with the new standards and the government will also provide them an income tax holiday for first three years and help them reschedule their bank loans if needed.

But crusher plants resorted to protests in May and the government added a package to facilitate them in enabling them to comply with the new law.

The Department of Mines and Geology has proposed 13 sites for stone quarries which will be provided through a bidding process to the crushers. The sites will have all required infrastructure like electricity and roads. Agitating crusher operators have not only created an artificial shortage but also barred over a dozen other crusher operators who meet the standards from operating.

The Ministry of Industry is expected to soon make public their names in the newspapers as per Tuesday´s direction from Chief Secretary Leela Mani Paudel.

Neupane denied that his members´ were to blame for the black marketing and also that they were barring other crushers.

Source: Republica