This sweeper in Sukkur collects gold for free

Meet the gold miners of Sarrafa Bazaar

SUKKUR: People looking to buy gold can look forward to paying exorbitant amounts due to its skyrocketing market price but sweeper Roshan Lal accumulates treasure for free.

He finds gold particles in a drain at Sarrafa Bazaar. All he has to do is to sit by the drain and sift through the muddy sewage water and strain it numerous times before only tiny stones are left in his metal bowl. He then scours through the contents of his bowl to pick out the miniscule gold particles, all of which are not actually gold. It often takes hours of meticulous work before he finds actual gold particles.

Roshan's family has been part of this 'business' for generations; his grandfather Darshan Lal and father Jawahar Lal also earned their livelihoods through this work.



Speaking to The Express Tribune, Roshan said that he has been searching for gold since he was a child and this is the only work he is an expert at. "Goldsmiths prepare ornaments from gold, during which they cut the gold into pieces and thus tiny particles are left, which, at the end of the day, are swept into the drain along with the dirt in the shop," he explained. "Therefore I start my work early in the morning and by the evening I manage to find 250 to 300 milligrammes of gold," said Roshan.



Earlier there were many sweepers in this business but now as most of the gold ornaments are ordered from Karachi and work of making ornaments in Sukkur has reduced considerably, he explained. "Now, only two or three of us are left in this business and everyone finds something [else] to provide bread and butter to their respective families," he said.

Roshan explained that the work is difficult and it takes the better part of a person's day to find a measly 250 to 300 mgs of gold. This is why most of the sweepers have left this work, he said. "I've found many pieces of gold-like metal and now I'll go home and sift through this in a special bowl and add acid to the mix to determine which is actually gold," he said.



The acid Roshan uses is able to melt every metal except gold. According to him, he then has to heat these gold particles to melt them into a tiny ball, which is further refined with the addition of acid. "This is how I manage to get some gold after toiling all day," he said. He usually earns between Rs500 to Rs700 per day.

President of the Sarrafa Association, Sukkur, Jawed Memon said this is very difficult work and there are only four to five people currently involved in it in the city.

"This is a very lengthy process and therefore most of the sweepers have quit searching for gold," he said, adding that in the past, most of the jewelers used to prepare gold ornaments at their shops, due to which dozens of sweepers used to find gold in the drains. "But now a majority of the jewelers order ornaments from Karachi and therefore there are few goldsmiths left at the bazaar," Memon said.

Interestingly, he said that in Karachi and other cities sweepers have to pay shopkeepers for the gold particles they find but in Sukkur they are not charged a single penny.

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