Five dead in Orakzai, Swat mine accidents

Two killed in emerald mine mishap; three perish in coal mine incident

SHANGLA:

Five miners hailing from Shangla were killed in two mine accidents in Orakzai and Swat districts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa on Thursday.

Local residents told The Express Tribune that three miners died due to suffocation after poisonous gas filled a coal mine in Tora Wari area of Orakzai tribal district, while two laborers lost their lives as the lift rope broke in an emerald mine near Mingora, Swat district.

Those who died in the Orakzai mine accident belonged to Daulat Kale of Alpuri tehsil of Shangla district.

All three bodies have been retrieved from the mine.

The victims have been identified as Rahimullah, Liaquat Ali and Sherzada. All three are natives of Daulat Kale, Alpuri.

Similarly, victims of the emerald mine accident have been identified as Hasanzada resident of Tuleek Shahpur and Muhammad Ofsar resident of Walnikoz Kana Shahpur.

The dead bodies of the miners were sent to Shangla for burial.

For five decades, bodies of the victims of deadly mine accidents of are brought to Shangla, leaving thousands of families without a bread winner.

There are thousands of orphans and widows as a result not to mention those who were injured in these accidents and were left handicapped for life without inviting any attention from the quarters concerned.

According to a survey conducted in 2015, more than 65 per cent of the population of Shangla is directly connected with the coal and other mines.

There are no safely protocols in these mines to save precious human lives in the event of an emergency.

Even personnel safety gears like helmets are not provided to these unfortunate men who are often forced to work in hazardous working condition.

Similarly, mines are often dug without qualified engineers so safety issues of the main structure are completely ignored in majority of the cases.

"There is no arrangement in the district to provide education, medical care and other facilities to children of mine workers," said a local elder Shah Jehan, adding that as a result in the absence of education one generation after another is forced to become miner workers.

In 2018, nine miners were killed and three injured when the roof of a coalmine in Darra Adam Khel town of Kohat, some 45 kilometres off Peshawar, collapsed.

The coalmine incident, the second such tragedy in the country in a month, happened in Akhorwal village as workers entered the coalmine at the start of the day, senior local administration official Shahid Ilyas said.

The nine bodies and all the injured were later pulled out of the mine, with two seriously wounded.

Muhammad Ejaz, a senior local police official, said it took almost four hours to retrieve all the bodies from the mine. He said that investigations were ongoing.

Coalmine owner Ishaq Ahmad claimed that the deaths occurred due to inhalation of poisonous gas.

However, a member of the local administration said there was an explosion in the mine that might have caused its roof to cave in.

The coalmine owner told the media that 12 miners were working in three groups in the mine around 7:30am.