Deadly profits: Unchecked mining – risking lives

Deep ponds claim four lives in Mansehra, local nazim among owners of mines

ISLAMABAD: While stone mining may be a thriving business for some it has proved to be deadly for many others.

Deep ponds created as a result of unchecked stone mining have claimed four lives in Mansehra district, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, The Express Tribune has learnt.



Despite the pain and grief of the victims’ families, no solution has been offered for the increasing threat.

“My son drowned in the pond formed as a result of stone mining on May 1, 2016, and since then my wife and I are grieving,” said Muhammad Rohail Shah said, adding that he was their only child.

“I don’t know how I will be able to move on,” A crying Rohail said.

Muhammad Sohail Shah, 13, went out to play with friends in the mining area, at walking distance from his house, when he slipped on the bank of a deep pond and drowned.

Local people with the help of divers recovered his body after several hours. Sohail was a seventh grader at a local school and the family had migrated to Mansehra after the 2005 earthquake.

The pond is more than 35 feet deep and has fencing to prevent any accident.



Sohail is among four other people who have lost their lives to similar incidents. Unfortunately, the incidents have failed to attract the authority’s attention and no steps have so far been taken to fix the problem nor have the families been approached. According to local residents, three other people have also lost their lives in similar incidents, apart from livestock that has also drowned.

The tragedy with Rohail’s family took place in the mining area leased by local Nazim Mohsin Ali Shah in Sarian village near Badra Road, Mansehra.

Marble, granite, precious and semi-precious stone mining is a popular business in Oghi, Shergarh, Darband, Tarnawai and Sherwan areas of district Mansehra, however, due to poor implementation of mining policies, the business is growing unchecked and is a cause of trouble for the residents.

In violation of the Mine and Mineral Policy of K-P, influential people lease land from locals on minor payments and abandon them after extraction.  As per the policy, the lessee has to balance the land after extracting minerals but has been largely violated for the last 10 years.

An archaeologist Ali Awan deemed the practice not only exploitative and disenfranchising, but also degrading for the ecology, adding that it demanded an immediate solution.

A landowner, requesting anonymity, said told The Express Tribune that some local influential people lease land from on minimal amount adding that if they insist on increasing the amount, they are threatened.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 28^th, 2016.