Gold Diggers Make Sand Dunes in Kalimantan Jungles
1/6/99
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Gold Diggers Make Sand Dunes in Kalimantan Jungles
Source: InterPress Service
Status: Copyrighted, contact source to reprint
Date: 1/6/99
ASPAI, Indonesia, (Jan. 6) IPS - Indonesia's Kalimantan province has sand
dunes in the jungle. Nature did not make them -- men did.
Forest, swamp and rivers are major features of this huge island non-
Indonesians know as Borneo, located in eastern part of the archipelago.
But a trip upriver to a south central area of Kalimantan leads travelers
to think they are in a desert in the thick of the jungle.
This "desert" is Aspai, a boom settlement reached by riverboat from the
port town of Kumai, Central Kalimantan. A four-hour upstream journey
through thick vegetation on the 60-km Sekonyer river brings visitors to an
anomaly of nature.
In a clearing on the west bank are sand piles and pits for several
hectares around. The place is dotted with makeshift wooden shacks, which
house the people who come to Aspai. They come from as far as Sumatra and
Java. They come for gold.
Sukerto hails from Madura, an island off East Java. Although he has been
in Aspai for just seven months, his weather-beaten, wrinkled coffee-black
skin, and blood-shot eyes betray the toughness of his toil.
He is in a six-man team of diggers in one sand pit 10 meters deep and 20
meters wide. When the prospectors exhaust the gold in one hole, they start
another pit.
The whole of Aspai is strewn with perhaps a dozen pits. And Aspai is just
one of nine scattered sites with some 2,000 to 3,000 prospectors all in
all, along the Sekonyer.
The gold prospecting sites are on state-owned land. The area used to be a
productive forest, contracted out to logging concessionaires. After the
trees were cut and the loggers left in the early 80s, gold was discovered.
The mining boom that has sprouted since then is illegal, dangerous and
environmentally destructive.
Sukerto's team pumps water from the river. Through a long hose driven into
the ground, which over the months has become a pit, the pump-driven water
shoots out sand from beneath the surface.
The surging sand and water are directed down a 3-meter high carpeted slide
at the pit's rim. The sand and water run off the length of the slide, but
grains of gold and other dirt are caught in the carpet's fibre.
Before the day is out, the material caught in the carpet is rinsed onto a
metallic pan, then mixed with mercury. The quicksilver bonds with the
grains of gold, leaving out the dirt.
"We can get about three grams of gold a day," Sukerto says, drawing on a
cigarette while taking a break. The prospectors can cash in their gold
with the local hardware supplier cum grocer who doubles as a gold dealer.
Basri, the grocer, says he buys the small miners' gold for 60,000 rupiah
($8) a gram.
He acknowledges it can fetch 65,000 ($8.67) in Pangkalan Bun, the
commercial district capital 20 minutes from Kumai. In Jakarta the price
was 69,000 rupiah ($9.20) per gram in late December 1998.
To keep track of fluctuating prices, Basri has a phone link, the only
phone in Aspai, with the gold merchants in Pangkalan Bun. He also has a
satellite dish to monitor world gold prices on the Singapore-based
television channel CNBC.
What does Sukerto do with his share? The small, wiry, 40-something man
from Madura says he brings his money home to the family he left behind.
In the past seven months he has returned to Madura three times. On his
first return, Sukerto took back 1.5 million rupiah ($200). For the second
trip, it was 700,000 rupiah ($93). On the third, he brought home 600,000
rupiah ($80).
Sukerto couldn't say how long he will stay. "For as long as I'm still
strong," he exclaimed, standing up and stretching out his arms to work
again.
Although Sukerto and his mates appear physically fit, they know their work
is hazardous. In 1997, the sides of another pit collapsed and buried one
digger alive.
Gold prospecting here is dangerous not only for humans but also for the
environment. In digging for gold, the prospectors turn over the ground.
The loss of topsoil nutrients, which create the sand dunes here, almost
certainly rules out the possible re-greening of the area.
Another environmental menace stems from the accumulating sand, which gets
washed into the river and causes siltation. The river is a dull brown, a
sign that loose earth is spoiling it.
One other peril is residual mercury after it is separated from the gold by
heat. When not handled properly, some of this quicksilver liquid winds up
in the river.
It contaminates the water, making it dangerous for fish, wildlife and
human beings who come into contact with the quicksilver liquid. The red
around Sukerto's pupils is telling.
Another environmental problem is the expansion of the gold miners'
activity into the northern part of a protected area on the mining sites'
border: the 415,000-hectare Tanjung Puting national park.
"Their mining is without permits. But it is difficult to enforce the law,"
says Budiman, a park ranger.
The authorities have confiscated the miners' equipment and evicted them,
but they keep returning, Budiman explains. He agrees that Indonesia's
economic crisis would only draw more prospectors.
But for the numerous Sukertos, it is a no-win situation: They don't dig,
they succumb to the crisis. They dig, a cave-in or mercury contamination
can harm or kill them.