Sand shortage drastically hits construction activity in Anantapur

Anantapur: Brick and cement industry in the district has been adversely affected due to poor sand supply by the government. Sale of bricks and cement has declined in the past three months owing to restrictions on sand transportation and the decrease in the business is roughly estimated at Rs 200 crore in the district.

Most of the construction and building works have been stopped. Slow down in business of building raw materials resulted in steep decline in generation of work for construction workers.

There are more than 500 brick-making units in the district both cement and red bricks. Subba Rao, a brick maker on the Upparapalle Road on the city outskirts stated that he used to produce 2,000 bricks per day, but during the past couple of months the production has come down between 500 to 1000 bricks per day. Due to restrictions on sand supply, employment to building workers has been reduced to 50 per cent, he said.

Sri Nagarjuna Steel and Cements dealer B Geetha told The Hans India that 50 percent of their business had declined. Contractors and builders stopped purchases of steel and cement in the past 3 months. Payments from regular customers too got affected and flow of money has come down significantly.

Many builders stopped their building activity due to sand fiasco of the new government. ``We do not know when this artificial deadlock would end, as all stake holders are adversely affected.

All building material sales had slowed down. Sand prices which was Rs.1700 during TDP rule has been increased to Rs.3,500 per tractor,'' says Viraaj Builders Managing director V Bhanumurthy Raju. He further said that during the past couple of months Rs.200 crore business was affected and the construction workers had migrated to Bengaluru and Hyderabad in search of livelihood. The government despite assurances could not bring back the derailed industry on rails, he added.

Construction Mason Sri Ram said to The Hans India that earlier, he used to have four or five building contracts on hand in a month, but now he is hardly able to get one work a month.