TURA, April 1 — Unscientific mining continues in the rich coal belt area of Nangalbibra in South Garo Hills despite Tuesday’s tragic event in which seven coal miners died inside a rat hole while digging for coal. These rat holes have sprung up in virtually every hill in Nangalbibra. Each hole is spacious enough to squeeze in one person at a time only. The miners were digging deep inside a mountain at Rongsa Awe, one of the richest coal belt areas of Garo Hills, when they accidentally dug into the walls of a abandoned mine shaft that was filled with water. Heavy water rushed into their hole and also led to their roof caving in. As a result the miners met a tragic end through drowning.
Although the incident occurred on Tuesday afternoon news of the tragic event reached the authorities only on Wednesday morning leading to the mobilisation of rescue teams. The water from the cave had to pumped out before the bodies could be retrieved. Rescue teams managed to fish out six of the bodies by Wednesday evening and the remaining body was fished out on Thursday. All seven had died due to drowning.
Such incidents have occurred earlier also and can be attributed to unsafe and unscientific coal mining. Almost all the mining in Nangalbibra is done without any safety precautions and the government has time and again failed to streamline such rat-hole mining. In certain areas mining is done from all sides on a mountain. Coal fires are also a hazard which cannot be controlled. Due to militancy presence in the area government officials refuse to move to the area to create awareness on the dangers poised by such mining. A few years ago, a whole team of coal miners who had dug deep inside the mountain never surfaced again following a massive cave-in.
There is not a single mine safe in Nangalbibra from such tragic events. During the early ‘90s Coal India Limited had operated a number of mines in the area to extract coal for their thermal power project. Although Coal India Limited had the technical know-how of scientific mining it could do little because by the mid ‘90s it had closed shop following the kidnapping of one of its senior officials by ANVC militants.