After paying a royalty of around Nu 1,500 truckers can avail sand from Mao River in Gelegphu. The sand will be loaded by machine deployed by Natural Resource Development Corporation Limited (NRDCL). But construction owners often reject the sand because it’s mixed with stones and mud.
Gelegphu Thromde area is seeing a boom in constructions of private commercial buildings. Sand is in high demand, and truckers are happy to provide. But there is question of quality and owners are not ready to compromise with quality. Presently, NRDCL is extracting sand from the riverbeds and land surfaces by machine service to meet the demand of the construction industries and rural communities. These sands are alleged to be mixed with mud and stones.
Truckers want permit to load sand manually. this will help in segregating stones and mud from sand, which will help in improving the quality of sand.
“Customers prefer good sand quality. We are not allowed to employ labour for sand loading. The immigration officials at site are strictly carrying out this rule. We can’t do anything,” Dendup Tshering, Trucker, said.
“Doing away machine loading by NRDCL and allotting us contract royalty for self-loading would benefit us because we could cater public with quality sand without stone,” another Trucker, Rajan Mongar said.
Truckload of sand costs Nu 3,500 in around Gelegphu Thromde area of which around 1,500 is paid as royalty. NRDCL official said they did not receive any complaint regarding poor sand quality.
