Financial Times

Reconstruction phase
Sand a problem, cement freely available
By Quintus Perera
Cement is available in plenty but sand, where riverside mining is controlled, would be a problem when the government speeds up the huge reconstruction programme after the tsunami disaster.

Nimal N Lokuge, Director/CEO, Sierra Construction Ltd (SCL) said that no government or any other Sri Lankan organization have made any inquiries for them to participate in the construction of houses for the affected. However the company is negotiating with a Malaysian party who is interested in constructing a complete village, with around 150 houses, community centre, small dispensary, children's park etc.

He said that at the moment there is a scarcity of sand and there is a restriction on mining of river sand and that it would be good if the restriction could be waived so that they would not have problems of sand scarcity. "Otherwise it would be a major problem"

Surath Wickramasinghe, President, Chamber of Construction Industry Sri Lanka (CCI), said so far the government or any other institution or persons have not inquired as to how CCI could be involved in this national effort of re-building the nation. He said that members of the CCI have all the expertise, manpower and necessary equipment in dealing with any construction need of the country.

He said that he believed that the urgent need is to build around 160,000 houses. Sand would not be a problem as the Road Development Authority (RDA) has now agreed to release the sea sand pumped to build the now stalled Katunayake-Colombo Super Highway.

He said there would be around 2.5 million cubic metre of sand available there and it is now released to the Land Reclamation Commission (LRC). The sand problem would only be in the western province while in other areas there is enough sand. On cement, a spokesman for Samudra Cement Company Lanka (Pvt) Ltd said they didn't anticipate any shortages as there were enough imports.

Small scale sand suppliers with lorries said that those who have permits would be selling a lorry load of 1 ¼ cubes of sand at Rs 5,500, thus a cube of sand would then cost Rs 4,400.

A regular sand supplier said that he has now stopped transporting and selling sand as the police has become a menace to their trade. Even in the case of sand transport licence holders, if they are intercepted by the police, the police would expect bribes of Rs 50 or more and if that is not forthcoming, the sand lorry would be taken to the police and would be kept for hours and only then released.

With regard to the availability of cement a spokesman for Samudra Cement Company Lanka (Pvt) Ltd said that they are importers of cement and they have their shippers and would not have any problems in supplying any amount of cement.

The Finance Manager of another major cement manufacturing company said that they have recently increased their capacity by another 300,000 metric tonnes per year and also several other cement manufacturers too have increased their capacities. He said that there would be around 50 to 60 percent increase altogether in the country now.

He said that according to the Centre for National Operations a large number of housing units would have to be built. The cost of cement would be 10 percent of the total building cost. Four million bags of cement or 200,000 tons of cement would be required to complete the above number of houses. He said that they are geared to meet anydemand for cement.

G. K. K. A. Ariyaratne, Head, Civil Engineering, National Engineering Research and Development Centre (NERD) said that NERD would not undertake building large numbers of houses but they are launching a scheme to train persons on how to make pre-cast and pre-stressed concrete, the low-cost method they adopt and also in areas selected to build new houses NERD would be building few model houses for the people to imitate them.

Prof G P P Dharmaratne, Chairman, Geological Survey and Mining Bureau (GSMB) when asked whether the restriction of river sand mining would be suspended to facilitate the impending heavy demand for sand to reconstruct a large number of houses, said that there is no such intention and they have not calculated how much sand would be required for the construction of additional houses due to the tsunami disaster. He said that any decision would be taken only after consulting the relevant minister.

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