Indonesia's Wildcat Gold Mining Dilemma

"I have no worry about mercury. I drank it. We gave it to the cows and the buffaloes. They drank it. Nothing happened."
"There's no problem."
Syarafuddin Iskandar, 58, illegal gold miner, Taliwang, Indonesia

"Initially, we thought of it as just illegal pillaging of resources."
"But when we looked deeper at it, we realized it is a more serious social problem."
"They [the illegal gold mines] are creating an environmental disaster."
Alexander Ramlie, director, Amman Mineral Nusa Tenggara, West Sumbawa, Indonesia

"This is a big dilemma."
"If we stop them [the tradition of the illegal miners] we are faced with the economic problem of how to feed them."
H.W. Musyafirin, regent, West Sumbawa

Rescuers work to bring miners out from a collapsed mine in North Sulawesi province, Indonesia.

They're termed wildcat miners. What they do is illegal. But the government of a country with huge poverty and mass unemployment, is loathe to stop the illegal miners. They're working, they're providing for their families. They've been untouchable. But the mining is not without its hazards. Aside from the dangerous and illegal use of proven carcinogenic chemicals, there are other dangers that lurk, such as collapse of illegal tunnels.

A year ago, an illegal gold mine collapsed, leaving people screaming for help and rescue teams leaping to aid them. Three people were confirmed dead by an official of the mine's disaster management division. Two of the dead were felled by falling rocks, reported Abdul Muin Paputungan, an official with the disaster management agency. "Some of the [100] victims who are still trapped are screaming for help. We can hear that they're (able to) respond to us, but we cannot reach them yet because the land is susceptible (to collapse) and moved easily."

Landslides, it would appear, are frequent occurrences that haunt these illegal mines. But in this instance it was the inadequate struts supporting the mine entrance that had given way and caused the collapse. It was the operation of the mine itself that caused the landslide. "The type of soil -- if it is stony or not -- how many trees or other forestation is present in the location, and the ability of the slope to support the burden if it rains (heavily)."

 

Sumbawa is an island 160 kilometers east of Bali. Makeshift mining camps are all over the hills in Sumbawa. These are miners, however illegal, forced to earn their living because of rife unemployment. They make use of mercury, now outlawed in legitimate mining operations in the extraction of gold from ore. Thousands of small-scale miners work illegally in West Sumbawa, using land the government has leased to large mining companies.

 

A rough estimate of a million small-scale gold miners operate across Indonesia where the use of mercury in these wildcat camps devastates health and the environment. Mercury, a heavy metal, is well documented as a slow-acting poison seeping into the food chain, the cause of birth defects, neurological disorders and death. 

 

The police this year ordered the miners to dismantle their camps, cut up their equipment with a chain saw and block the mine entrances with debris.

On the other  hand, these mines boost the Indonesian economy in their employment of poor people, taking them out of poverty, leading the government to practice avoidance of disturbing the status quo. One licensed and land-leased mining company has taken the initiative to protect the environment, where the government itself hesitates to. Officers from a Police Mobile Brigade Corps shuttered dozens of outlaw mining camps on the initiative of PT Amman Mineral Nusa Tenggara mining company.

 

"We are crushed that they are closing this mine because we have no other way to make a living", Zaenal Abidin, an outlaw mine operator pointed out, of the campaign by the mining company to put a stop to illegal mining and the use of mercury. There are no government warnings, much less enforcement of the ban on the use of mercury, so miners dismiss the notion that the heavy metal is in any way hazardous.

 

An Amman Mineral-operated site called Idotan has seen the presence of 7,000 wildcat miners operating for decades with established permanent communities and an industrial-scale village for ore processing. Sumbawa native Anton, owner of several mines and mills, questions why it is that companies like Amman Mineral can get lucrative mining concessions when he and his fellow miners are considered to be illegal.

 

About a million small-scale gold miners operate across Indonesia.

"Why do you allow the outsiders to operate while we, the locals, are forbidden from doing the work?" he has asked reasonably enough. Miners in the Taliwang region earn an average of 15 times over that of other occupations from their gold mining enterprises. Illegal operations represent the second-largest contribution to the West Sumbawa Regency after Amman Mineral's legal operation.

 

Ten percent of the population, representing 26 million people live in poverty. Leaving government officials with the dilemma of how to proceed. Their efforts at trying to persuade the miners to stop using mercury have gone largely unheeded.

 

Wildcat miners digging for gold near Taliwang, Indonesia. The illegal miners use mercury, a toxic chemical, to process the ore.  Photos: Adam Dean, The New York Times