Societies allege corruption in Azhikkal dredging work

KANNUR: Amidst the deadlock over the tender process for the manual dredging at Azhikkal, the cooperative societies involved in mining have alleged that the tendering process has been delayed to help the mafia.
“The manual dredging was introduced to generate employment for residents involved in sand mining. It was clearly mentioned that only those cooperative societies with at least 90% members from the local community will be involved in sand extraction.All these rules have been violated with the support of officials,” said Shukkoor C K, vice-president of a society.
Cooperative societies were permitted to manually dredge and mine the sand for construction purposes essentially to deepen the shipping channel. The decision to allow only those societies of sand mining workers with 10 sq km area of Azhikkal was aimed at preventing any possible corruption.
However, allegations have cropped up that all labourers are now migrants and the societies are mostly fraudulent. Most of the 19 societies involved in dredging and sand mining have been set up for other purposes and none of them has 90% local workers, it has been alleged.
A document obtained under RTI shows that 19 societies were suspended from dredging but they are permitted to continue in the name of maintaining status quo as a writ against the tender process is pending in the court.
A high court order on March 12 had clearly mentioned that the pendency of writ petitions will not bar the finalization of tender proceedings in accordance with the relevant provisions of the law.
IUML leader and Pappinisseri panchayat member C P Rasheed alleged that the authorities were not keen on tendering as the process involves corruption worth crores of rupees. “There is an axis of corruption, involving some top officials in the ports department and district-level leaders of some political parties, including the Congress,” he said. “Only a high level enquiry can bring out the truth.”
Interestingly, though the permission is to dredge 12 lakh tonnes of soil and sand in a year, records put it at around 6.2 lakh in 2012-13 and 3.3 lakh in 2013-14. “At least 20 lakh tonnes of sand is mined every year, and only a fraction of this is shown on records,” Rasheed alleged.
The government and the ports department should get around Rs 750 from a tonne of sand mined.
Port officials said steps were being taken to closely monitor the dredging and the quantity of sand extracted. “Steps have been initiated to finalize the tender. We have prepared a list of bidders and submitted it to the high court,” port conservator Manoj Kumar T P said. “Police have also strengthened the vigil against malpractices.”