Minister, Chair of the Government Office, Vu Duc Dam, has confirmed that licenses for mining ores were granted to a lot of mines recently. Meanwhile, the mining activities have been carried out spontaneously in a large scale, which has caused serious consequences.
The government has assigned the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment (MONRE) to draft the strategy on minerals exploitation in Vietnam by 2020. Minerals are the important national assets which must be protected, managed and used in an effective and economical way. The exploitation, processing and use of minerals must come in line with the national development strategy and for the national benefits. Minerals need to be exported on the principle of balancing the exports and the domestic demand.
The decision has been made after mass media continuously rang the alarm bell over the serious environment pollution in the mining areas. The participants at the national conference on mining held in Nha Trang City on August 8, 2011, all voiced the same concern that the titanium ore mining has caused widespread waste of resources, affected the environment (soil, surface water, and groundwater); damaged landscape, topography, and affected people's life.
The conference heard that the decentralization mechanism in licensing mining projects is the most important reason behind the spontaneous and massive exploitation of titanium ores, which has also led to the imbalance in exploitation and processing.
To date, Binh Dinh province has granted 21 licenses to the titanium exploitation projects, while Binh Thuan has granted 8 licenses.
Cong Ly newspaper has reported that the Thuy Nguyen district in Hai Phong City, which contains 380 million cubic meters of limestone, 33 million cubic meters of silic and 360 cubic meters of clay, has been “cut into small bits” by the exploitation activities.
A cubic metre of silic now can be sold for 40,000 dong, while a cubic meters of clay for tens of thousands of dong. Therefore, every day, it is estimated that exploiters “chop up” the mountains and dig up thousands of cubic meters of soil to look for ores for sale.
In Dak Nong province in the central region, the forests have been chopped down because people rush to look for gold. The exploiters use draw machines, bulldozers, drilling and all other possible tools to draw sand, dig mines and split mountains, which has devastated thousands of hectares of forests. Here the streams of Dak R’mang, Dak N’ting, and K’rong No River have all become muddy.
The gold illegal exploitation in the area has seriously damaged the local rivers which are the main sources of clean water for local residents. The rivers now serve as the tanks that contain mud and red soil. More importantly, the land plots along the foothills, mountains or the upstream slots are full of toxic chemicals such as mercury or cyanua, which gold exploiters discharge to the environment.
Jang A Phanh in Dak R’mang commune said that in the past, the rivers were mild and blue. However, they have become furious nowadays, because they bring skin diseases to local residents. A lot of people were once poisoned when drinking the water from the river, while shrimp and fish had all died. The water of the rivers has become no more the means of subsistence for the poor people there.
Residents in Quang Ngai province have also been weeping because of the exploitation at the stone mines. There in the province, where the stone mines bring money and food, local residents have to live together with white stone dust all the time and go on seriously downgrading roads.
The provincial department for natural resources and the environment has said that the noise and dust concentration in the air always far exceeds the allowed level by tens of times, while the dust here always contains benzene and SO2.
C. V
(MONRE)