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Han Solo
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Friday December 10, 2010
Syndicates luring children to pan for gold in Bau
By VANES DEVINDRAN
[email protected]
KUCHING: Children in the Taiton area in Bau near here are being roped in as cheap labour to mine gold illegally by syndicates out to make a quick buck. The shocking discovery was made by The Star yesterday when it encountered four chil-dren walking along the muddy trails leading to the Gunung Tabai cave where the illegal mining was rampant.
The four, who were out looking for lokan (river cockles), earn their “pocket money” through illegal mining. One of them, known only as Ameng, said the going price to mine for the towkays (bosses) was RM20 for a 20kg gunny sack of scraped minerals from the mine.
Hazardous job: One of the mining caves at Gunung Tabai in Sarawak, which is the site of rampant illegal mining activities. — ZULAZHAR SHEBLEE / The Star
“There are so many towkays whom we work for. They will inform us if there is a job, where and when. We go by shifts and we can be chiselling away till 4am,” he said. Ameng claimed he and his friends could sometimes scrape up to a total of 60 gunny sacks at a time, earning RM1,200. He said all one needed was a chisel and hammer.
“Some want us to makan gaji (be paid a uniform rate) of RM40 per day but that is not good enough. “Why get RM40 when we can get more by the number of gunny sacks we fill?” he said. He said having done this several times before, he and his friends had no problem distinguishing what could potentially be gold from other minerals.
“You can tell by its shiny appearance that it’s gold. The stuff that you scrape would have that pinkish, orange and sometimes purplish hint. The earth around it would be whitish, so it’s easy to tell this apart,” he said. According to him, each shift would have 20 people mining and he and his friends would sometimes work with those from across the border.
One of the tunnel's opening burrowed by the illegal miners in search of gold. These golden earth is said to contain gold minerals.
Taiton is located close to the Serikin border that separates Sarawak and West Kalimantan. When asked if they realised the dangers, Ameng and his friends replied they did but thought it was all right since “everyone” was doing it. The opening of one of the tunnels they recently worked in was around 1.5m wide and narrowed as it descended.
With nothing but their torches to light the way, the children work the tunnels, oblivious to the risk of cave-ins. Ameng and his friends declined offers to mine the area recently as they found it tiring getting to Gunung Tabai, which was around 50m uphill via a rocky and muddy trail.
One of the ill-supported tunnels which the illegal miners dares to venture into. These narrow tunnels could go as deep as 30m.
He said the last time they visited the mine was on Monday and the area that they had been working on had recently caved in. When taken on a tour to the site later, Murray Stevens, the geology manager of North Borneo Gold (NBG) Bau Project which is licensed by the state government to explore Gunung Tabai for gold, said the company’s main concern was the safety of the miners.
“They are in our area but our main concern is safety because we are worried that someone may get badly injured. “When they start digging without safety equipment, that makes it (the mountain) unstable. A slab of rock could collapse and injure somebody,” he said. Stevens said the number of people going up the mountain also increased the risk of someone getting injured.
He said the illegal mining had been carried out on a small scale for a long time. However, the activity increased with the increase in gold prices lately.
Stevens said NBG had been working closely with the police to find a solution to the problem.
“The rising number of people coming to mine illegally has prompted us to put blockades and erect signages. We have no issues with the local people. We are just concerned about their safety,” he added.
