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"A mine can betray you at any moment"
Small-scale mines:
Danger in El Dorado
As they expand rapidly in developing countries, small mines are posing increasing dangers for workers - especially women and children. A new ILO report * says small mines in some countries have a workplace fatality rate up to 90 times higher than mines in industrialized countries.
POTOSI, Bolivia - The first light of dawn is the last light of the working day for most miners here.
As they descend into the mine, they work in dark, stifling tunnels, enduring workplace conditions little changed from the barbaric times centuries ago when African slaves and local people extracted silver and minerals for the Spanish Conquistadors.
Today, the Conquistadors are gone, and the mines belong to anyone willing to work them. Yet modernity has provided little or no improvement in working conditions. Most mines in Bolivia are run as small cooperatives by families who can rarely afford the safer modern technology used in larger mining operations.
"You never know when an accident may happen," says a miner named Pedro, who has been working there since the age of 10 and now, at age 16, he has learned to make do with outdated equipment and unreliable makeshift explosives. "Something can blow up at any time and there are many deaths from explosions and cave-ins. A mine can betray you at any moment."
Fatal accidents occur worldwide
Small-scale mining is on the increase in many developing countries, employing up to 13 million people worldwide. And though their scale may be small, their earnings - for some at least - can be large.
Small mines in China produce gold worth $200 million a year. More than half the gold and diamonds from countries like Mexico, the Philippines and Mozambique, come from small-scale mines. Mercury, zinc and raw minerals are also mined in addition to precious metals and gemstones. But these fortunes are made at a very high price in human life.
"The reason that small-scale mining is particularly dangerous both in terms of accidents and in terms of health risks, is because it's largely unregulated; there's very little surveillance of people's health", says Norman Jennings, an ILO mining expert who authored the report. "By the time they get ill, either from having lung problems like silicosis or being contaminated or poisoned by mercury, it's often at a very late stage in the development of these illnesses and it's too late to do anything."
The new ILO report warns of the dangers in the rapid expansion of small-scale mining. Because they are so unregulated, the fatality rates in small-scale mines can be up to 90 times higher than in mines in industrialized countries.
In China, it is estimated that more than 6,000 miners are killed each year in small-scale mining accidents. Many of these deaths are due to gas or coal dust explosions. Accurate numbers can be difficult to come by, since much of the work is hidden.
"In all too many cases, human and financial factors contribute to deaths and injuries; inadequate, inappropriate or unsafe equipment are real problems in many small-scale mines," the report says.
But many of these deaths have more insidious causes. Extreme temperatures, exhaustion and poor ventilation exact a high toll. Silicosis, or black-lung disease, caused by years of breathing unfiltered, dust-saturated air will take a man's life in ten years. The hospital in Potosi, for example, is filled with men who depend on bottled oxygen to live. They know their time is limited, their lives cut short by the mine.
"When I worked in the mine, I was breathing all this dust," says Marcelino as he breathes oxygen through a tube. "Finally, after a while, the sickness came. At my age, it has coated my lungs to the point where now I can hardly breath. It's maldemias. There isn't any cure."
Women and children are especially at risk. In Latin America women and children can often be found scavenging for ore and gemstones. As many as 8,000 women work in the gold-mining areas north of La Paz, Bolivia in particularly harsh conditions, according to the report.
Millions of women working in small-scale mines are also exposed to intolerable conditions.
The ILO report estimates that as many as 4 million of the world's 13 million small-scale miners are female, though many work part-time. In Latin America, the proportion is somewhat higher, with women accounting for anywhere from 10 to 20 per cent of the workforce. In Africa the participation of women is even higher, reaching 60 per cent in some mining areas. In Asia the proportion of women workers is less than 10 per cent with most of their activities limited to sorting, packaging and preparing of materials for shipping.
Women in Africa are actively involved in the processing of raw materials, including crushing, grinding, sieving, washing and transporting minerals. In some mining centers, these activities are even dominated by women who undertake these activities in the home, exposing entire families to high risks from silicosis and mercury poisoning. Although women rarely work underground, they can be found panning for gold or raking the surface of deposits in search of small amounts of raw material.
Because of their size, even children as young as nine may work in the bowels of the mine itself. They are used to set explosives, lift heavy loads and must work with dangerous tools. The hazards they face - from inundation, cave-ins, tuberculosis, dust, mercury and other chemicals - are the same as those faced by adults, but the risks to immature bodies are much more severe. Working in mines is one of the most dangerous tasks facing working children, and is more dangerous than work in the agricultural, construction and transport sectors.
In the case of both women and children, the almost total lack of access to health care makes it impossible to gauge the extent of occupational diseases, especially silicosis and mercury poisoning.
"With better safety regulation and support from government and financial sources," says the ILO's Jennings, "miners might one day find the way out of these mines to be the way out of poverty for them and for their families".
- Miguel Schapira, ILO PRESSE, and Norman Jennings
* Social and labour issues in small-scale mines. Report for discussion at the Tripartite Meeting on Social and Labour Issues in Small-scale Mines. International Labour Office, Geneva, 1999. ISBN 92-2-111480-5. Price: 17.50 Swiss francs.
Like most economic activities, small-scale mining has positive and negative aspects. It is closely linked to economic development, particularly in the rural sector in many developing countries; helps stem rural-urban migration, maintaining the link between people and the land; makes a major contribution to foreign exchange earnings; enables the exploitation of what otherwise might be uneconomic resources; and has been a precursor to large-scale mining.
The ILO maintains that "small-scale mining can and should be encouraged by creating the operating environment that encourages the use of best practices for mining and occupational health and safety, and environmental protection".
The ILO recommends that: