By Rathindra Kuruwita

The Ministry of Environment is planning to involve the cooperative system in mining and distribuion of sand in a bid to end illegal sand mining and bring down the sand prices, Minister Mahinda Amaraweera said yesterday.

This was proposed during a meeting the Minister had with officials of the Geological Survey and Mines Bureau.

“We discussed how to control the price of sand because it was obvious that businessmen are artificially inflating prices. There are also reports of these businessmen mixing high quality sand with other varieties of sand not suitable for construction work. These businessmen also create artificial shortages of sand, the Minister said, adding that three cubes of sand were sold at Manampitiya, a major source of sand, at Rs. 14,000. However, the same quantity was sold in Colombo and other urban areas at around Rs. 65,000, he said.

“Thus, I instructed officials to formulate a plan to address these issues. It was proposed that the cooperative system can be used to tackle most of these issues. As a pilot project, we will create cooperatives of sand miners in six locations in Batticaloa, Trincomalee and Polonnaruwa. We will also set up a system to regulate excavation and transport.”

Secretary to the Ministry of Environment Dr. Anil Jasinghe said that despite attempts made to ensure that the vulnerable rural communities enjoyed the benefits of natural resources in their areas, a cabal of regional politicians and businessmen controlled and benefited from those resources. “When I was in the Health Ministry, I thought the pharmaceutical mafia was strong, but now I see that the sand and granite mafia is as strong as that. This mafia controls the price of sand and granite and the prices do not reflect the scarcity of the resources.”

The regional politicians were controlling sand and granite extraction and members of the vulnerable rural communities were employed as labourers. Those regional politicians and businessmen also flouted laws openly, he said.

“For example, machines can’t be used to extract sand from rivers. They can only be used to extract sand from river beds but everyone knows that machines are used to extract sand directly from forests. Our objective is to allow the poor people to benefit from these resources but they are only labourers now”

The economic situation was not good and that members of the vulnerable communities should be allowed to enjoy the resources around them, the Ministry Secretary said.

Dr. Jasinghe said sand like all other resources had to be exploited in a sustainable manner.