Focus on illegal coal mining in the south

Unemployment and poverty continue to fuel illegal coal mining in southern Kyrgyzstan, a practice which has already taken the lives of scores of victims in the mountainous Central Asian state. "Nearly every year, the lives of unauthorised coal miners are lost," Moidun Khatamov, head of the Kok-Yangak employment centre, a once bustling mining community in the southern Kyrgyz province of Jalal-Abad told IRIN, noting that two years earlier seven miners lost their lives. "We are not able to offer them any jobs, [and] the main enterprise of the town - the mine - does not operate," he said. "They have no place to go. Nevertheless, it is better than being thieves or robbers as in some other cities," the state official conceded reluctantly. His town is not alone. Although substantial coal deposits are still present, in the mid-1990s experts described Kyrgyzstan's coal industry as being in a state of collapse. In the early 1990s, only four of the 14 state-owned coal mines were considered economically viable, and little coal came from privately owned mines, a US Library of Congress report said. According to a US Department of Energy report, following the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, the situation took a turn for the worse. In 1992, Kyrgyzstan produced 2.37 million mt of coal and consumed 2.73 million, while in 2001, those figures dropped to 0.47 million and 1.37 million respectively. During that time, local economies were marginalized and even local railway lines were disassembled and sold off as scrap metal to Chinese dealers, leaving local youth with little or no job prospects for the future. As a result, illegal miners, or "Apaches" as they are called by locals, have resorted to digging for left over coal in abandoned mines to earn their keep - a practice which has increasingly turned deadly. Using a crowbar, a shovel and a pickaxe, the "Apaches" overlook basic safety concerns such as ventilation, in the Soviet built mines, while handmade ad hoc timbering supports the ceilings of the decaying labyrinth of corridors underground. Such total disregard for safety, however, comes at a price. "The news from mining towns reminds us of a war," Makhmudjan Atadjanov, a safety expert from the provincial capital of Osh, told IRIN. Earlier, rocks had buried five young people in Samarkandyk village of Batken province and nobody was rescued, while before that, two bodies were discovered in a mine in the Jin-Jigan settlement of the same province, most likely due to asphyxiation. In 2003, two residents from Kyzyl-Kiya town did not return from a mine, while five more people were poisoned by methane gas near the town of Tash-Kumyr, he reported. But according to the State Technical Control of the Emergency Ministry of Kyrgyzstan, such cases are rarely disclosed leaving many to speculate that the numbers could be higher. Moreover, government efforts to stop the practice have gone unheeded. "In the beginning, the authorities wanted to close our mine, and then they gave up," Nurbek Satybaldiev, a 28-year-old "Apache" told IRIN. "As far as the authorities are concerned, we steal its property by raking in developed resources, but we consider it an honest income. We would not risk our lives for one minute if we had another job. I am ready to quit this business even now, but let the government give us a job." "The risk is obviously big," Saparaly Satybaldiev, an "Apache" team leader of some 15 young men explained, adding that they brought up between 3 and 4 mt of coal a day. "We have no other choice. Everybody has to live and feed their families," Satybaldiev said. Already 55 years old, he still makes his way down the darkened caverns to some of the more dangerous areas of the mine. "Time will show what will happen to me," he said. Meanwhile, seasonal fluctuations in price - generally US $1.5 a bag - are also an issue. "The business is seasonal. There is only good demand in winter and autumn," 33 year-old Rustam Satybaldiev, a relative of Nurbek, told IRIN. "After spring, we ship our coal for storage." But should an accident occur as a result of illegal mining, state officials place the responsibility on the miners themselves. Just recently authorities in Suzak district (Jalal-Abad province where the town of Kok-Yangak is based) decided to legalise individual extraction of coal in local coal deposits. "A special commission studied the activities of illegal coal miners," Turdunazir Bekboev, the head of the district told IRIN, noting that individuals had two choices - either to officially apply for permission for such activity or simply stop. The local authorities are confident that legalisation of coalminers' activity will oblige them to create safety conditions for their own work. But coalminers disagree. "First, we do not have money to purchase special equipment for safety measures. Second, taxes will crush our small business," they maintain. Makhamadjan Sharafutdinov, one of the heads of "Kyzylkiya Komur", the oldest coal mining enterprise in the country, believes that many of the problems impacting the mining communities - including the above-mentioned "Apaches" - could be resolved by further investment in the industry. That may not be a bad idea. "The coal reserves of Kyrgyzstan are some 35 billion mt, which is 30 times of that of Turkey and around half of China's reserves, which is 65 billion mt. These are huge reserves," Prof Dr Sencer Imer of Ankara University and a former coordinator for relations with Central Asian countries at the Turkish prime-ministry, told IRIN in Ankara. "These reserves should be utilised. For example the coal reserves of Germany are 24 billion mt and the coal reserves of the Australian continent are some 45 billion mt," he added. Imer said that if there were serious investors even the fact that the country was mountainous wouldn't be a problem. "These are the things that can be resolved," he said, adding that the Kara-Keche coal reserves in the north of the country were very promising. But potential investors for such huge coal production projects are being cautious. "They [investors] may be afraid that they might not be able to get a return on their money, but it is not true. When you get the things up and running, you can export part of the coal and sell part of it on the domestic market." The academic noted that coal for the Bishkek thermal heating station was being imported at a price of some $45 per mt, while local coal extracted from Kara-Keche could be available in Bishkek at some $30. Meanwhile, coal mining in Kyrgyzstan continues to decline because large domestic consumers (for example, thermoelectric power stations) have switched to cheaper external energy sources from neighbouring Kazakhstan, as well as domestic hydro-electric programmes. Indeed, coal, used to heat households and to fuel some thermoelectric plants, is mainly received from its northern neighbour in a barter arrangement for electric power. Kazakh coal is preferred because the heaviest demand in Kyrgyzstan is concentrated in the north - close to Kazakhstan - the country's remaining coal mines were in the south, from which transportation was problematic, another US government report revealed. But another miner felt investment in another line of business might be the answer. "There are a lot of fruit woods and big pastures around our town. Perhaps it is possible to develop cattle breeding and fruit and berry processing." He added: "We cannot draw loans, there is no possibility to pledge a half or a part of our houses (in towns of miners, one barrack-type house is inhabited by several families). And it is too expensive to get a loan from a bank." Back in Kok-Yangak, the problem is all the more apparent. Nearly half the town's houses have been disassembled and sold off as construction material or scrap. "People are running away from the town. A third of the population has already left. The remaining people survive only because of [illegal] coal mining," Abibilla Mataev, a retired miner, told IRIN. Such pessimism is not difficult to understand. Several years ago, one local NGO began training unemployed miners to work in other vocations - only to find that it didn't work either. If a former miner was trained as a TV technician, there was no job for him anyway - making illegal mining the only real alternative. Rustam, the eldest son of Saparaly Satybaldiev, recently decided to quit going down the mines altogether and train young athletes instead - only to discover there was nobody to train. Local children often become "Apaches" to help their families, their parents noting that football couldn't feed anybody. "Society must not be indifferent to this problem and fates of unauthorised coal miners," Shavkatbek Tajibaev from Osh Province Trade Unions Council told IRIN. "All of us, including the government, should think about protecting the rights of these people for life and work. Prohibitive measures cannot be a solution in this case," he summarised.