VIJAYAWADA: Negotiations of the officials of the Mining department with Central agencies with regard to sand mining and supply in the State are in the final stage. The State government is likely to enter into an agreement with Metal Scrap Trade Corporation (MSTC), a public sector undertaking, next week.
It is learnt that though it is confirmed that a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) will be exchanged with the MSTC, talks are continuing to decide whether the agency will take up the task of implementing the revised sand policy of the State government on its own or it will appoint another agency.
When contacted, Principal Secretary (Mines and Panchayat Raj and Rural Development) Gopal Krishna Dwivedi told TNIE that the talks with the MSTC are in the final stage and that an MoU is likely to be exchanged next week. Stating that the first priority of the State government is to give the task of implementing the revised sand policy to Central agencies, Dwivedi said after writing to over a half a dozen Central agencies explaining the proposal, they have received response from some of them.
It may be mentioned here that as per the old sand policy, the AP Mineral Development Corporation was entrusted with the responsibility of sand excavation, storage and transportation. However, following complaints about difficulties in the online booking system, transportation and other issues, the government revised the sand policy, providing offline booking facilities to customers and allowing them to arrange their own transportation facilities.
While giving the nod to the revised policy, the State government also decided to give first priority to Central agencies and then only to go for private firms by calling technical and commercial bids in case there is no response from the Central agencies. Stating that the sand mining and supply is continuing in the State as per the existing policy, Dwivedi said that they were supplying more than one lakh metric tonnes of the construction material a day even as the production stands at around 80,000 MT a day.
“As all the reaches are not operational, there is shortage of sand and we are meeting the excess demand from the 15 lakh MT stored in stock yards,” he said, adding that there are some backlogs in twin Godavari, Guntur and Kadapa districts.