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| Sunday, 28 March 2004 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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Alarming scarcity of sand for construction work after elections by Elmo Leonard A huge scarcity of sand for construction faces the country, and will greatly hamper development work following the general elections of April 2, President, Chamber of Construction Industry Sri Lanka (CCI) Surath Wickramasinghe warned. Sand mining thus far carried out in Sri Lanka has been done with machinery hired from overseas, with a new plant costing around $35 million. The new government could utilise funds from the $4.5 billion due, following the Tokyo parley for sand dredging equipment, Wickremasinghe said. A national construction policy must be implemented in order to stabilise supplies of sand and punish those involved in illicit river mining. Mining of all riverbeds in the island must stop. It has lead to the drop in the riverbeds themselves, salivation of river and groundwater, loss of sources of drinking water, disaster to agricultural land and alarming sea erosion in the Western, North-Western and Southern Provinces where most of the population is concentrated. For the reconstruction of the North, riversand mined around Anuradhapura has to be depended on, and must therefore stop forthwith, to prevent environmental disaster, Wickramasinghe said. Even in the Middle East, where inland sand is abundant, sand for construction work is pumped out from the sea. These countries employ sand-washing plants, which scientifically take out salivation. All developed and developing countries mine their sand from the sea and Britain's needs have been met from the ocean for more than 100 years. Even the construction of the Colombo-Katunayake Expressway should be discontinued without delay due to escalating costs, Wickramasinghe said. Offshore sand has been used since recently for major landfill and road construction projects, notably, Muthurajawela (5 million cubic metres) Colombo Katunayake expressway (6 million c.m.) Jaya terminal (1 million c.m.) South Asian Gateway (half million c.m.). Sri Lanka needs 8 million cubic metres of sand per year, according to the Gerry Byrne and Anura Nanayakkara report on alternatives to riversand. The Western Province uses 40 percent of the island's sand needs, Central Province - 12 percent, Southern Province - 15 percent, North Western Province - 10 percent, North Central Province - 7 percent, Uva - 3 percent and Sabaragamuwa - 7 percent, with the Eastern Province accounting for 4 percent. |
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