KAKKANAD: In a major fillip to the online sand pass system of the Ernakulam district administration, the Akshaya centres will start issuing ‘sand tokens’ from Thursday onwards to those who have submitted their online request at the centres.
“People who had registered their names will get a token from the Akshaya centres after submitting the same to the booking centres which they had mentioned in the online application,” an official in the district administration said.The allocation of the sand will be on the basis of first-come-first-served basis.
8,000 Applications
“We have received as many as 8,000 applications so far and we are all set to allot sand for them by the end of this month,” he said. Apart from Muvattupuzha municipality, the district administration has opened six ghats in the panchayats such as Piravom, Ramamangalam, Maneed, Poothrikka, Valakam and Marady. The applicants can get sand from these centres after submitting their tokens which they got from the booking centres.
“Now, only these six centres will be available for getting sand as the other centres in the district are yet to complete the procedures. After completing the formalities, those ghats too will be opened,” he added. The district roughly has about 54 sand ghats spread over 22 panchayats.Earlier the district administration had received flak from the panchayats for opening the online sand distribution system but it was implemented with the firm decision of District Collector M G Rajamanickam.
He had stated that if the district administration failed to implement the online system then sand mining would not be possible in the district this year .
“Earlier, there was every chance of manipulation of sand distribution from the ghats but with the introduction of the online system there will not be any room for manipulation. We are trying to establish a corruption- free distribution system,” the Collector added.