Quarry checks bring down granite production

Ongole: The inspections by the vigilance and enforcement department for the last one-and-a-half months in the galaxy granite quarries in Chimakurthy affected the supply of raw stone to the polishing and processing units in the district.

There are about 170 black galaxy granite quarries in and around Chimakurthy, which produce about 60,000 cubic metre stone per year bringing Rs 6,000 crore income through exports globally. The stone that is quarried and processed in the Chimakurthy is 100 per cent intended for the export due to its unique feature and quality and is considered one of the most expensive stones used in construction field around the world.

The government is receiving Rs 10 crore a month as royalty and another Rs 3 crore as the district mineral fund. However, given the huge volume of stone being produced and exported, the government suspected violations and illegal transport in the business and ordered inspections in all quarries. The district officials have been carrying out these checks for the last 45 days.

Requesting anonymity, a senior official in the inspection team, explained that they are conducting a lengthy and first-of-its-kind inspection in the quarries and polishing units in the district.

The officer said that they have observed many violations in the quarries and most of them are tax evasions by transporting a high volume of the stone generating bill for less volume, etc., He said the unauthorised quarrying in the encroached land is also among the violations.

He said that they are generating electronic records marking the area of the mining, its depth, pit volume so that this inspection could be used as a reference for inspections in the coming years to easily identify violations.

Learning of the inspection of the vigilance and enforcement department, nearly 30 per cent of the quarry owners closed operations pending inspections. But the officials are entering the quarries conducting inspections and creating records of the pits.

This shutdown of the quarries affected the supply of raw stone to the granite polishing and processing industries. Yerramneni Koteswara Rao, president of the Andhra Pradesh Small Scale Granite Factories Association, said that the supply of raw stone was reduced by more than 50 per cent due to the inspections.

He said maintaining machines in the factories is a heavy burden for them if they can't run them round-the-clock, but due to the unavailability of the stone they are forced to stop them. As there is no work, the workers in the factories are also affected with only a few of them getting employment, he added.

However, the vigilance and enforcement department officials explained that the inspection would take another 15 days, and they would submit a report on violations by the quarries and factories along with the electronic data record of the complete mining and pit volume to the government.