Loei goldmine to close 'within 5 years'

GOLD-MINING activity in Loei will stop within five years even if the mining company operating there is granted permission to expand its current operation in the province, an executive of the firm said yesterday.
Tungkum Company Ltd managing director Bundit Sangsaree-thamm revealed yesterday that the company plans to shut down the gold-mining operation in Loei province and move to Laos in the next five years.
This will happen even if the Thai government gives the firm the nod to mine gold on an additional site in Loei covering over 270 rai.
The expansion was proposed to the Primary Industries and Mines Department.
He explained that the company plans to end gold-mining activity in Loei because of strong opposition from local people and that it has to shoulder a heavy financial burden. Besides this, the company says there is no guarantee that the amount of gold remaining in this site would be enough to justify significant further investment.
While the estimates of the amount of gold at the site were as high as 1 million tonnes, Bundit said, adding that this was only ever a potential figure.
The company received a licence in 1991 to search for gold on more than 270,000 rai of land in Loei. The company has engaged in actual gold mining on more than 1,300 rai. It was ordered by the Industry Ministry to suspend its activity as the mine’s tailing pond needed maintenance.

Ordered to suspend activities
The Cabinet also ordered the company to suspend its activity and allow agencies to investigate the original source of contamination by hazardous substances such as cyanide, lead and mercury in both the environment and in local villagers’ bodies.
Bundit said that if the company wins the concession to mine on the 270 rai it will have enough money to pay wages for 500 employees.
“If we cannot get this concession we will ask again and again until we get approval,” he said.
The company will soon move to operate a goldmine in Laos’ Xiangkhoang province, as it has won a concession to operate a goldmine there on more than 230,000 rai.
Lerdsak Khamkhongsak, a coordinator of the Cultural Ecology Group, said he and a group of |students who oppose Tungkum Company’s mining on the new site in Loei planned to demonstrate |at the Stock Exchange of Thailand.
They want to inform the company’s shareholders that the public hearing for the new gold mining site was not as smooth as the |company previously reported to the SET.
Supree Wongdeeprom, chairman of the National Economic and Social Advisory Council’s Quality of Life development sub-committee, said his committee would recommend the government designate zoning areas between the gold mining site, head watershed areas and residential areas.
The government should pay also for the company to remove the gold-mining plant from the watershed area and pay affected villagers.
The panel will set up a working group of health experts and academics to conduct fact-finding missions relating to mining-related problems in local areas.