Tirupati: Sand scarcity badly hits construction activity

Tirupati: The lockdown restrictions which were imposed for more than two months have badly hit the construction activity. In addition, acute shortage of sand added more woes to the construction works in the district.

It is learnt that all the builders and individual house constructing owners, are facing hardships due to non-availability of sand.

Presently, a single tractor sand is sold at Rs 4,500 in Tirupati in black-market. In Chittoor and Tirupati Urban police districts, Special Enforcement Bureau (SEB) police have intensified their operations on illegal sand transporters and are seizing a number of tractors every day under various police stations.

Specially they are imposing fine up to Rs 1 lakh and filing serious cases against the sand transporters and drivers. By this act, many tractor owners were in panic to supply sand directly to required persons.

AP Mines department has to procure required quantities of sand from official sand reaches. But no sand reach exists nearer to Tirupati.

As such all builders and individuals are compelled to procure sand from Penumallam sand reach which was located 35 km away from the city. As the sand has to be transported from a long distance, its cost has been increased.

As per e-seva booking Rs 500 has to be paid for procuring a tractor sand from official sand reach. People have to spend Rs 3,000 to Rs 4,000 to transport it from the reach to Tirupati city.

For the past one week, all the builders and individuals are facing hardships for procuring sand for constructions. Many individuals are using quarry dust instead of sand.

Totally, construction projects worth about Rs 300 crore and around 1000 individual house constructions were stopped in Tirupati city surroundings due to unavailability of sand.

A builder P Padmanabham of Tirupati said that previously tractor owners were supplying sand at Rs 2,000 per a tractor. Now the rate has been increased to Rs 4000 per tractor.

In the circumstance, they have stopped apartment constructions due to scarcity of sand.