KATHMANDU: Experts today said the crusher industries were being operated by violating the existing rules, severely degrading the environment.

“None of the crusher industries have done the Environment Impact Assessment till now, though the Environment Protection Act has made it mandatory,” said Dr Ravi Sharma Aryal, Joint Secretary and Advisor to the sub-committee under the Parliamentary Natural Resources and Means Committee to look into the functioning of crusher industries.

The government ordered to close more than 200 crusher industries a month ago after receiving the directives from the committee to ban the export of boulders, sand and stones to India.

Highlighting the industries’ carelessness on the issue, Santosh Mani Sharma, another expert on natural resources, said, “According to the law, only stones deposited by the river are allowed to be crushed but the data of the past year shows that 58 lakh metric tonnes of the construction material had been exported to India. The amount is much higher in comparison to the capacity of the river to carry the debris.”

The meeting dwelt on several aspects of environmental degradation due to the rampant extraction of construction materials. “Industries have created havoc to the ecology. It should be checked,”said Gagan Thapa, a member of the PNRMC.