KATHMANDU: The sub-committee formed under the parliamentary Committee on Natural Resources and Means submitted its report on sand and boulder extraction from the foothills of churia range to the full committee today. The sub-committee’s coordinator Chandra Dev Joshi submitted the report to the House committee chairperson Shanta Chaudhary.

But the House committee today asked its members to go through the report and come up with their suggestions tomorrow.

Chaudhary said, “We will conclude on tomorrow’s meeting and direct the government to move as per the recommendation.”

Gagan Thapa, member of the investigation committee that visited the extraction sites, said, “It was found that many industries are being run without fulfiling the needed legal procedures and extraction of sand and boulder is rampant.”

Thapa added, “Even the initial environmental examinations were not done by many crusher industries and the government has not done any research on the impacts as well as monitoring is totally lacking.”

The report prepared after the field investigation states, “The government claimed that only about Rs one billion is received each year from the industries as tax but the industrialists maintain that pay Rs six billion to authorities every year.”

Further, the report has specifically recommended works to be done by the

government instantly

and advised authorities to move ahead with a

long-term vision.

The report has recommended shutting down of all the illegal crusher industries operating in the foothills of the churia range at the earliest and allowing the legally operated industries to run after an in-depth scientific study on the effects of the extraction in the environment.