© 2023 Dr Margaret Sheppard

Occupations Food Production Market Small Business Building Other Occupations

Stone Crushing

This is an arduous occupation, but does help supplement the household income.  Dynamite is used to break up the stone in a quarry. Then a trailer load is purchased and delivered for stone crushing . They stones are laboriously hammered down into smaller and smaller pieces. Then when it is of the correct crushed size it is sold for road stone or hardcore.


A stone quarry

The larger pieces are how load is delivered. As the stone crusher hammers the pieces down, they are placed into the piles of different sizes

Stone Crushers at work. Sri Lankan people are very hard workers. Especially for the poor, life can be hard as there is only limited social welfare and pensions.

This lady is over 80!

Woven coconut “sheets” provide shading from the hot sun.

Stone Crusher’s main tool is the metal hammer

(N.B. These photos were taken in the mid 1990s. Since the end of the Cirll War social conditions have greatly improved, and there are far more opportunities.)