Rajbiraj, September 13 :

SSB personnel on the Indian border have stopped the movement of Nepali trucks carrying sand and stone chips from Koshi Barrage to Bhimnagar in India since the last six days.

Some 300 workers have been rendered jobless, while revenue collection also has been affected.

Around 30 trucks of sand, boulders and crushed stone used to be move daily from Saptari. The SSB has, however, restricted the entry of these trucks from September 7, the Sunsari Customs Office at the Koshi Barrage said.

A daily wage earner Hari Mandal said around three dozen workers, who used to earn a living by loading and unloading sand and stone, are now jobless. Truck entrepreneur Shambhu Jha said the demand for Nepali sand and stone chips had increased after India started the

construction of the Delhi-Gotahi road. He added Indian firms like Diamond India and Simplex Co used to buy Nepali sand and stone chips.

He claimed though sand and stone are being exported to India from other transit points, the SSB at the Bhimnagar transit point is restricting the export. Jha said over a dozen trucks loaded with sand are stuck at the transit point.

Another trucker Pawan Kumar Mandal said such restrictions cause loss of thousands of rupees. Chief of the Bhimnagar customs office in India, Kailash Nath, said he was not aware of the restriction. “We have not restricted the entry of those trucks; we don’t know anything about the SSB stopping them,” Nath said. SSB personnel S Lokendra Singh said the trucks were stopped as they had failed to complete the paper work.