Administration clears no to brick klin owners to revises rates of bricks

Administration clears no to brick klin owners to revises rates of bricks

Yash Khajuria	9/6/2011 9:30:20 PM
JAMMU, Sept 6: While powerful lobby of brick klin owners is pressurizing the administration to revise the rates of the bricks, administration is in no mood to oblige their attempts. Sources said that government has decided not to increase the rates of the bricks, a major building block in the construction of houses and other developmental projects. While brick kiln owners say that rapid increase in the cost of the raw material like Coal, Firewood, Clay and Labour has increased manifold and administration should review prices, but sources said that government has no immediate plans to accept the demands of the klin owners. Rates were last revised on April 1, 2010. According to Janak Raj Mahajan, president of the Brick Kiln Owners Association (BKOA) because of the non-revision of rates brick kiln owners are not getting their production cost back, resulting which all the 259 brick kilns owners are facing virtual crisis. “Since the rates of the raw material has increased rapidly automatically leads to the increase in the production cost, and which is not in our favour”, Mahajan said. He said that as the government is not increasing the price of their product on the other prospect we are already paying tax on the raw material which we use, and the administration is imposing to pay input tax which is truly the injustice to brick kiln owners. He said that the government should have to revise the rates on the pattern of the neighboring states including Punjab and Himachal Pradesh. As the BKOA has presented that the rates of B class bricks at Rs 4175 per thousand, rates of C class bricks at Rs 3800 per thousand and the rates of tiles at Rs 4375 per thousand. He further said that the rates of brick in Punjab are above Rs 4000 per thousand and in Himachal rates of brick is Rs 4500. It is pertinent to mention that the government has recently on regular complaints of overcharging for bricks by the brick kiln owners. A team οf officers led bу Assistant Commissioner, Jammu, Vivek Sharma on Aug 28 conducted an inspection οf brick kilns іn R S Pura, Sub Division. On this issue when contacted to the Deputy Commissioner Jammu, Sanjeev Verma, said that they (Brick kiln owners) are asking for the increasing rates then what to do we cannot fix the rates only favorable to them. Since panel of experts is analyzing the whole matter and whenever we come to the conclusion we will inform publicly. It is important to mention here that during inspection, eight of the 15 brick kilns were booked fοr various offences under provisions οf Labour Laws, Weights and Measurement Enforcement Act. Same numbers of brick kilns were also booked by CAPD for overcharging and for not showing the rate lists and other offences under Essential Commodities Act-1980. As par the existing government rates, the sale of class 'A' Bricks has been fixed at the rate of Rs 4100 per 1000 whereas the rate of Class 'B' bricks at the rate of Rs 3100 per 1000 inclusive of loading and unloading as par norm anyone found overcharging his license may be cancelled. But due to the unconsciousness of the administration the bricks are being sold at the rates of brick owners choice, at RS Pura Jammu, where the bricks are being sold at Rs 5500- 7500 per thousands on arguing the rate lists the brick owners said that till the government do not fix issue the new rate list they’ll sale brick on the same prices. Now the customers are annoyed by the overcharging of brick kiln owners.