MYANMAR
Myanmar Times-May 9
Rescuers have stopped searching for more miners believed to be victims in the latest deadly landslide in Hpakant township in Kachin State, as the toll in the tragedy rose to 20, a lower house legislator told The Myanmar Times on Sunday.
U Tint Soe, Pyithu Hluttaw MP for Hpakant, said that based on witnesses’ accounts, several more people were still buried under tonnes of mining waste that collapsed last Friday due to rains. “We stopped searching yesterday evening,” U Tint Soe said. “It’s dangerous for members of the rescue team because another landside is likely to happen due to heavy rain.”
U Tint Soe said rescuers recovered 16 bodies from the site of the tragedy while four more miners died while being treated in the hospital. He added that six other miners are still being treated in the hospital.
He said that local villagers told him that more people were still buried in the soil that collapsed in the landslide, but it is difficult to ascertain the number of the unrecovered victims. He said thousands of people scavenge in the huge pile of mine waste every day.
Government officials, civil society groups and members of the National League for Democracy formed a rescue team to search for missing people soon after the accident.
The landslide occurred near Waikha mine, according to the Associated Press, which quoted Tu Mai, the administrator of Seng Tawng village in Hpakant. The township, 950 kilometres north of Yangon, is the epicentre of the world’s biggest and most lucrative jade mining industry. Jade is normally mined by heavy equipment that generates huge mounds of waste soil, which easily causes landslides, according to the AP report.
The industry generated about US$31 billion (K41.67 trillion) in 2014, with most of the wealth going to individuals and companies tied to Myanmar’s former military rulers, according to Global Witness, a London-based group that investigates misuse of revenues from natural resources.
People often settle near the mounds to scavenge for jade in the precariously high piles of waste. Fatal accidents are not rare, and more than 100 people were killed in a single landslide in November 2015.
Local activists said the profitability of jade mining led businesses and the government to neglect enforcing already very weak regulations in the industry.
“The government’s plans to tackle the problem in the jade mining region are not practical,” said Tsa Ji, a researcher and member of a local activist organization, the Kachin Development Networking Group.
“The authorities have passed the laws without really understanding how the mining companies are destroying the environment on a large scale.”
Hpakant, the heart of the jade mining region, is also enmeshed in an armed conflict between the government and the ethnic rebels of the Kachin Independence Army, in which the military has been launching offensives against local armed groups to control territory holding the jade mines.
Researchers said the civilian government led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has done little or nothing to find a practical solution to the problems, which include environment degradation as well as safety.
“Many jade mining companies do not follow rules and regulations on where or how to dump waste,” said Maw Htun Awng, a mining governance researcher. “Then there are no actual mechanisms to watch if these companies are following the rules, and that’s why this is part of the cumulative impact.”
But the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar said authorities in the area have taken steps to prevent a repeat of the tragedy. “As part of the preventive measures against landslides, local authorities have formed inspection teams at the ward and village level to regularly inspect more than 10 mountains of dumped soil in the township,” it said on Sunday. “Authorities also removed makeshift tents in the at-risk area.”
The Hpakant mining tragedies worsened in 2005 when miners began using heavy machinery to extract jade from the mines, the newspaper said. “Migrant workers from across the country flowed into the area to scavenge small jade stones in the discarded soil,” it said.
Local authorities lamented that they did not get cooperation when they sought to relocate migrant miners squatting in at-risk areas to safer places and make sure that mining companies dump their waste in accordance with safety rules.
“Shortcomings in following safety regulations by both mining companies and migrant squatters pose challenges for local authorities in preventing future landslides around jade mines,” the newspaper said.
Earlier in January, at least 15 people were killed in three landslides in the same area.
