Chief Minister Nara Chandabrabu Naidu has directed the officials to solve all the problems in supply of sand considering it as an essential commodity. Conducting a review with the officials of the Department of Mines, he said that to improve the ease of sand booking provide an opportunity to book directly at the reaches along with the online portal.
He said that this will make it easier for those who cannot book online to get sand. He ordered that there should be no irregularities anywhere in this process and that there should be constant vigilance and regular monitoring. Real information should be provided to people about availability of sand, transportation, operation costs etc. from time to time, he added.
The Chief Minister wants to ensure that black marketing does not happen with checking, GPS tracking and audit procedures. Officials have brought to the attention of the CM that 108 reaches with a capacity of 70 lakh metric tons will be made available in the state from the 16th of this month.
In the coming days, they said that private individuals will also start digging with the permission of the mining department to increase the number of sand reaches. But even in private sand reaches, Chandrababu said that the sale of sand will have to be done at the price fixed by DLSC. He said that currently 30,000 metric tons of sand will be supplied per day.
The Chief Minister said that the sand reaches conducted by private agencies should be selected by the district level sand committees through the tender process. They will be allowed to operate the stock point in Sand Reach for 24 hours.
The CM directed the officials that the sand supply rate at the reach point should be as fixed by the DLSC. He wants to increase the availability of sand in the market by speedily allowing sand mining in patta lands. More vehicles should be made available to speed up delivery of sand. Minister of Mines Kollu Ravindra, Mines Chief Secretary Mukesh Kumar Meena and others participated in this meeting.