When Brang Aung left home in early April, his wife pleaded for him to stay for t...
HPAKANT, Myanmar/YANGON - When Brang Aung left home in early April, his wife pleaded for him to stay for their newborn son’s naming ceremony, just a few weeks later.
During a night shift on April 22, disaster struck. A muddy lake above his employer’s mining site breached its banks, unleashing a wave of water and dirt that buried 55 men instantly. None survived. Jobs in the hills of Hpakant can pay well by the standards of rural Myanmar - Brang Aung earned around $290 a month. But the area has a reputation for lawlessness, with high rates of drug addiction and HIV, and the jade mines themselves are frequently hit by deadly accidents.
Regulations were still being drafted to implement a new law passed last year that would help bring mining under control by limiting the area covered by individual licenses, he said, reducing the power of large companies. Suu Kyi’s NLD won a landslide victory in a historic election in November 2015, the same month that a massive slag heap collapsed in Hpakant and killed more than 100 people. A spokesman for the party told Reuters at the time the new administration would review regulations to ensure the mining area was safe.
A group of community organizations wrote to President Win Myint in September last year, warning of the dangers of an “unlawful situation” in Hpakant. Kyaw Kyaw Lwin, one of about a dozen rescue workers still on the site, told visiting Reuters reporters that there was no hope of pulling bodies from the deep pit of thick mud that had entombed the workers and their machines.
Following the collapse, authorities suspended 17 mining blocks belonging to 11 companies around Hpakant, citing safety concerns. Nine Golden Dragons and Myanmar Thura, named by authorities as the two companies whose workers died on April 22, were not included and have faced no censure. “According to our investigation they didn’t break the rules. They were just doing their work and the instability of the earth happened,” he said.
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