BJP workers led by Coimbatore South district BJP president Vasantharajan submitted a memorandum to the district collector's office, appealing to end the strike by stone quarry and crusher owners. According to the petition, these companies have been on strike for the past 10 days, bringing construction work in Coimbatore to a standstill and leaving labourers jobless.
Coimbatore: The BJP members, led by Coimbatore South district BJP president Vasantharajan, filed a memorandum to the district collector's office demanding an immediate end to the strike by having negotiations with stone quarry and crusher owners.
According to the petition, crusher and quarrying companies have been on strike for the past ten days. As a result, construction in Coimbatore has come to a halt. Thousands of labourers have been laid off.
The main reason for this is that, over the previous two years, approximately one crore units of Coimbatore's mineral wealth have been illegally smuggled to Kerala with the help of mafias. The mineral resources generated in Coimbatore on a daily basis are illegally transported to Kerala with the assistance of 90% mafia and only 10% to Coimbatore.
We have repeatedly conveyed this to the government and staged protests, but the government has not paid heed to it and as a result, it has now imposed a fine of crores of rupees on each quarry. It's like doing surya namaskar after the eye has been spoiled. In Kerala, our mineral resources are stocked in large quantities. The present strike has had no impact on Kerala.
But there isn't a single unit of gravel or M SAND stock in our city. The mineral wealth we smuggled to Kerala for Rs. 2,000 per unit is now being sold back to us for Rs. 5,000 per unit. More mineral resources have been extracted and illegally sold to Kerala in the last two years than have been taken up in the previous 75 years.
The general population and construction workers have been substantially impacted by the stone quarrying and crusher strike, and their livelihoods are in jeopardy. I respectfully suggest that you initiate quick talks with the stone quarry and truck owners in order to end the strike. They had also requested to stop the smuggling of mineral resources to Kerala, which is the root cause of this, and to protect Coimbatore from drought, resources and Coimbatore.