Villagers seek action against sand miners

Madurai: Villagers of Pothumbu village in Madurai have submitted a petition to the district collector demanding that action be taken to prevent illegal mining of sand from the two tanks in their village.

M Madhavan and B Lenin from the village said that more than 6,000 people are residing in the village. There are two tanks, one each on the east and west of the village. There are over 1,600 acres of land under agriculture and the farmers depend on the two tanks for their irrigation.

They alleged that the removal of silt from the tanks was allowed by an order of the collector which said that the silt should be removed to the depth of three feet, but the contractors were illegally removing the sand which was beyond the permissible limit. Machines were being used to remove the sand, beyond the silt level.

This was depriving them of their ground water resource. They had complained to the revenue inspector of the village about a month ago and the contractor was warned. But, the illegal sand mining continued.

On Monday, they submitted a petition to the collector K Veera Raghava Rao, who in turn asked the north tahsildar to stop desilting work immediately, if there was illegal sand mining. The villagers said that they will resort to a protest if the contractor continues to mine sand illegally from their tanks.