Mines dept suffers from acute staff crunch in Mahbubnagar

Mahbubnagar: The Mines and Geological department in Mahbubnagar is facing severe staff crunch as authorities are finding it difficult to supervise and inspect hundreds of quarries and mines located across Mahbubnagar and Narayanpet districts.

At present there are 68 mines and quarries located in Mahbubnaga and about 32 quarries are situated in Narayanpet district. As there are only 5 members who are serving in Mines and Geological department in the district, the little staff it is not adequate to serve the needs of the two districts and therefore the State government has directed the district administration not to carryout division of the staff and let the operations continue from the old district of Mahbubnagar.

Because of this, the Mining department officials are not able to supervise over 100 quarries leased to various companies across Narayanpet and Mahbubnagar districts.

"We are facing actuate shortage of staff. For both the districts of Mahbubnagar and Narayanpet only 5 member staff is available because of which we are not able to discharge our duties effectively as we are overburdened with various activities at a time," said a senior official. However, despite suffering lack of adequate staff, the department is earning big revenues for the government's exchequer from the district. The department has been consistently achieving 100 per cent targets set by the government.

The major earnings for the Mining department in Mahbubnagar is received from leasing the quarries of quartz, granite, lime stone, marble stone and sand to the private owners.

Last year during 2018-19, the State government had set a target of achieving Rs 70 crore revenue, as against this the district mines department earned Rs 90 crore which is Rs 20 crore more than the set target.

This year again, the State government had given a target of achieving Rs 115 crore to the combined Mahbubnagar and Narayanpet Mines department. Of this Mahbubnagar is given the target of Rs 75 crore while Narayanpet Rs 40 crore. However, the officials are terming this target to be very tough to achieve as they are already overburdened due to lack of staff.

"We have been doing our best with the little staff and last year we could comfortably achieve the revenue targets. This year as the target is Rs 45 crore more than the last years, it may be tough to achieve it given the low strength of staff. But we will do our best to reach the targets," said Mohanlal, Assistant Director, Mines and Geological department, Mahbubnagar.

In Narayanpet alone there are 100s of small and big quarries. Once the officials give license to the digging companies, they have to inspect and supervise on a regular basis to ensure whether the leaser is dinging the quarry as per the norms or not.

However, in many of the cases there are incidents where the quarry owners sometimes tend to cross over the norms and violate the terms these issues must be supervised and inspected regularly for which there is a need to have adequate staff.

However there are no possibilities that the government will fill up the vacancies in the Mines and Geology department and the task for the mines department is said to be very tough.