But non-governmental organizations say that a lack of regulatory oversight from the government in the mining industry is also a major problem endangering the lives of miners in Myanmar. Myanmar’s National Human Rights Commission blamed the landslide on the lack of due diligence and risk assessment from mining companies - at least 12 of which owned licences covering specific parts of the Wai Khar mine at the time of the accident. Heavy rainfall was initially assumed to be the trigger for the collapse. Eventually, on 2 July, a huge volume of quarry slope materials “collapsed into a flooded open pit, burying and killing at least 172 jade miners”, write the authors.Īlthough mining companies in Hpakant had been ordered by the authorities to suspend operations from 1 July for three months for the monsoon season, impoverished freelance scavengers were still hunting for unpicked jade exposed by rain. In what is thought to have been Myanmar’s worst mining disaster, in June last year rain began to saturate the ground at the northern section of the Wai Khar open-pit jade mine in the region of Hpakant. Quake-prone Myanmar leads the way in seismic monitoring But a lack of transparency from the Myanmar authorities - together with political and ethnic conflict in northern Kachin state, where jade mining is centred - means field surveys of mine sites are “nearly impossible”, the authors argue. The jade industry in Myanmar is poorly regulated and mine collapses are common, causing many hundreds of deaths since 2004, according to the study authors. They feed an industry that supplies 90% of the world’s jade and earned an estimated US$8 billion in 2011 - 20% of the southeast Asian state’s export revenue. About 400,000 miners scavenge jade from the slopes of open-pit mines, often with little safety equipment. Mining of jade, largely for jewellery and carvings destined for China, has exploded in Myanmar in recent years. The international team of authors behind the study 1 - the first to rigorously document a mining accident in Myanmar - says the results suggest that mismanagement and poor design contributed to the tragedy, not simply monsoon rains, as was initially assumed.Īs well as shedding light on the causes of the disaster, which have not yet been fully resolved, the authors hope the findings will aid documentation of mine collapses and improve site planning - both in Myanmar and in other countries that see frequent mining accidents. Credit: Zaw Moe Htet/AFP via GettyĪ detailed analysis of satellite and remote-sensing data has uncovered poor conditions at the Wai Khar jade mine in northern Myanmar, where a landslide last July killed more than 170 people. Hundreds of people were buried by a landslide when the wall of the Wai Khar open mine collapsed on 2 July 2020.
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