Thanks to the good number of orders on hand from various countries, granite barons in the black galaxy town of Chimakurthy were hoping to revive the mining activity which has come to a standstill following imposition of lockdown to combat coronavirus.
But they were taken by surprise when thousands of workers, a majority of them from Odisha, Bihar and Rajasthan, poured on to the streets demanding that they be sent back to reunite with their families.
The administration has cleared the decks for restarting mining in over 300 mines including 150 in Chimakurthy. "Yet we are unable to start production as the workers are in no mood to return to work," Granite Owners’ Association general secretary M.A. Azeem laments.
On an average, 30,000 cubic metres of the material is mined per month and sent to various countries, including China. Mining has come to a halt since the lockdown was imposed, he adds in a conversation with The Hindu.
However, processing of granite has begun in a small way in the big gangsaw units in the Special Economic Zone at Gullapalli for sending the processed granite slabs to the USA, European and Gulf countries. The units in the SEZ are in a position to process about 50 container loads of material as against the normal 600 containers as they operated only with skeleton staff, SEZ sources say.
Low-key operations
Only 50 big units are operating. More than 100 units in the SEZ have not started operations worried as to how they could market in the present situation, explains Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation Zonal Manager M.L. Narasimha Rao. Except for pharma and select granite processing units, others, including food processing units, have not resumed operations.
The Industries Department has given a no-objection certificate to 217 units outside the COVID-19 containment zones as against over 3,500 industrial units in the district.
