VietNamNet Bridge – Hundreds of mining enterprises have been found as running away after the mining period and not fulfilling the post-mining works they committed when receiving the exploitation licenses.

Either running away…

In principle, all mining enterprises have to commit to restore the initial situation of the land areas after they complete the exploitation works. However, in most of cases, miners have run away, leaving hundreds of hectares of deserted mineral exploited land in the central province of Binh Thuan.

The provincial authorities have requested the department of natural resources and the environment to join forces with competent agencies to check the exploited mines in the locality which have finished the exploitation, but have not finished the post-mining works as committed.

The province has instructed to stop the chaotic mineral exploitation and tighten the loosened management over the exploitation in the locality.

The inspection tour has found out that the exploitation has finished at 252 mines, but the miners have run away, while having not restored the initial conditions of the land as committed.

Many of the 252 mines stopped working in 2002 or 2003, or 10 years ago. The mining sites are now just the fallow land with no cultivation, which is really a great waste in the natural resources.

Meanwhile, since the mining stopped many years ago, it’s now nearly impossible to find the miners to force them to fulfill the works they committed.

Unreasonable regulations lend a hand to businesses to shirk their duties

In principle, mining enterprises have to pay a deposit when receiving the license for mining to be sure that they would fulfill their commitments.

However, the problem is that the required deposit is so small that miners would rather lose the deposit money than implementing the promised works.

An enterprise, which was licensed to exploit minerals in an area of one hectare, only paid VND800,000 in deposit. Meanwhile, the miner of the sand mine in Ham Tan district paid VND311,000 dong only, a surprisingly and unimaginably low sums of money.

According to the Binh Thuan branch of Vietinbank, the total sum of money that the 252 miners paid in deposit for the mining projects had been VND1.6 billion by January 2013. Meanwhile, the sum of money needed to restore the initial conditions of the environment would be tens of times higher.

The director of an afforestation company said that in order to cover the mined land area with forests, it would cost multi billions of dong.

… or taking works for form’s sake

The provincial authorities have found out that many mines tried to restore the initial conditions of the land as promised, but they just did for the form’s sake, while in fact, the works did not help.

A miner was licensed to exploit sand in the area next to the Go Boi cemetery in Ham My commune. However, after getting the license, the miner transferred the exploitation right to another miner, who then exploited sand at the higher-than-allowed depth. In 2009, the miner ran away, leaving the site with very deep holes and the land where the cultivation was impossible.

When the local authorities discovered the case, the licensed miner did not level the ground, but just dug holes to plant some eucalyptus.

However, the miner still has been listed as the most responsible miner. Meanwhile, the majority of miners tried to escape from their duties. Especially, many of them have got dissolved, which means that the local authorities would have to come forward and spend money for the land rehabilitation.

Thien Nhien