Friday, March 29, 2024 | Ramadan 18, 1445 H
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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Spotlight on illegal mines drives to hide deaths

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After watching her sister-in-law and a friend die in a mica mine in eastern India in March this year, 15-year-old Ritika Murmu vowed she would never again pick the mineral and set out to warn others.


“I was picking mica when the debris fell. I went screaming to the village for help,” she said, recalling how her teenage friend died instantly while her sister-in-law died in hospital.


“I will never go back (to the mica mines), never ever again. I tell other children the same thing.” But while Murmu wanted to talk about the deaths in Amjhar village in Jharkhand state, other family members - including her brother Motilal Murmu whose 25-year-old wife died - denied there had been any fatalities.


For the two deaths were hushed up in a belt of eastern India reliant on mica where illegal mining is often the only way to earn an income, highlighting that people were still dying in mines despite promises by authorities to clean up the sector.


A Thomson Reuters Foundation expose in 2016 found children were dying in illegal mines but their deaths covered up with families given “blood money” to be silent and keep producing the mineral used in make-up, car paint and electronics.


The revelation that seven children had died in two months prompted pledges by multinationals sourcing mica from three Indian states to clean up their supply chains, and authorities vowed to accelerate plans to legalise and regulate the sector.


But returning this year to two major mica hubs in Jharkhand state — Koderma and Giridih — the Thomson Reuters Foundation found mining was largely unchecked and that people were continuing to work — and die — in illegal mines.


Police records, local newspaper articles, and interviews with charity workers, officials, and eyewitnesses and relatives revealed 19 deaths in mica mines since 2018 — but only six were reported to the authorities. Three of the dead were children.


While the spotlight on the sector has led to more children going to school, campaigners and police said it had made villagers less likely to report accidents and deaths in a trade they know to be illegal, fearing arrest or losing their income.


The Jharkhand state government said activists recorded five child deaths in mica mines in 2018, but none so far this year.


Police said they had never taken action against mica pickers but growing awareness of the illegality of the trade had made it far less likely for deaths and accidents to be reported to them. “That they fear reporting deaths or accidents shows their fear of losing their only source of livelihood,” said Govind Khanal of the Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation (KSCF).


Roli Srivastava


— Thomson Reuters Foundation


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