The district-level expert committee on sand mining on Wednesday recommended the state to provide necessary sand to the houses that are being constructed with financial aid from the state government.
Accordingly, 5 per cent of the sand mined from authorised river banks will be set aside for such houses.
A decision in this regard was taken at a meeting convened by District Collector P I Sheik Pareeth at his camp office.
The sand will be supplied as per the rate fixed by the state government. The decision was taken on the basis of complaints received from various quarters that necessary sand was not supplied for the construction of the houses that are sanctioned under various government schemes.
Houses that will be constructed utilising tsunami relief fund will also get the benefits of this decision.
There are several restrictions on mining sand from the river banks. The expert committee meeting also decided to ask the government to take a final decision on the issuance of temporary permit to sand mining at river banks with an area of up to five hectares. The meeting also decided to recommend the government to consider raising the fund given to the district-level council for protection of river banks to `20 lakh.
The District Collector said the district administration is trying to launch online sand pass system.
“A permanent monitoring system will be launched for supervising the issuance of sand permits by various panchayats,” Pareeth said.
The expert committee meeting will be convened once in every two months and the suggestion in this regard by district panchayat member Abdul Muthalib was approved by the meeting.
It also decided to send the cost estimate of Rs 1.17 crore for the construction of foot overbridge at Porkkavu Kdavau at Kaliyar.