Wild Asia nominates the villagers of Bukit Koman as our first Wild Asia Hero. The 300-odd families have been fighting an uphill battle to protect their community and the environment from potential contamination by a gold mining facility in their village. JULES ONG reports.
Written by Jules Ong on 25 Jan 2010 with 0 comments. Be the first!
Our first Wild Asia Heroes nomination goes to the Anti-Cyanide Committee of Bukit Koman. For two years, the Committee has led an on-going campaign to stop the usage of cyanide in gold mining in their village. Theirs is a story of courage and resilience in the face of formidable challenges. Wild Asia highlights their struggles in the hope that their story will offer inspiration and spur people to action.
Bukit Koman is a small village of 300 families. Most of the villagers are descendants of miners from Raub, the town just next to the village, once known as the "gold capital" of Malaya.
With the resurgence of gold price, the Raub Australian Gold Mining (RAGM) company had began a multi-million dollar operation using a new method to extract gold from tailings left behind from decades of conventional mining.
This method - carbon-in-leach - has an 80% efficacy rate of extracting gold, a far more effective but expensive way compared to shaft mining. It also carries more risk. According to the project's Environment Impact Assessment, 400 tonnes of sodium cyanide, a highly toxic compound is used in the facility every year. That translates to 1.5 tonnes a day!
What's worrying the villagers is that the facility is only 100 to 200 meters from the village and any spillage would be an environmental disaster.
According to the UNEP there have been 10 mining spills between 1985 and 2000 worldwide. The worst was in Romania, where 50 to 100 tonnes of cyanide spilled into the Danube water catchment killing tonnes of fish. Cyanide vapours could be seen hovering above the water surface for days.
Bukit Koman also sits in a water catchment area crisscrossed by many rivers that feed into the Klau Dam 13 km away. In a couple of year's time, this new dam will supply water to Selangor, the most populous state in Malaysia.
In March 2008, Dr Glen C. Miller of the University of Nevada and an expert in mining contamination visited Bukit Koman. After doing an investigation, he said the gold mining facility did not follow international standards of safety and is likely to cause long-term contamination.
Worried, the villagers organised themselves and set up the Bukit Koman Action Committee Against Cyanide. They have sent numerous letters of concern and memorandums to the company and the government, demanding for transparency in the mining operations and concrete safety measures in case of spillage.
In 2008, they collected 10,000 signatures voicing their objections to the usage of cyanide in the mining facility. They also mounted a legal challenge to stop the operations in their request for a judicial review of the Environmental Impact Assessment. But their application was quashed last year.
Their many requests for a dialogue with the company and the government who had approved the mining facility have all fallen on deaf ears. RAGM had begun its full operations using cyanide since February last year.
RAGM is a Malaysian company that is wholly owned by the Peninsular Gold Limited. It is listed in the London Stock Exchange and registered in Jersey, a semi-autonomous region under the British Crown. Jersey is also dubiously known as a tax haven.
The company's main shareholder is Andrew Kam whose father, Kam Mun Wah, is a veteran politician of the Malaysian Chinese Association, a component political party of the ruling government. Its other shareholders are the daughter of the Sultan of Pahang, Puteri Seri Lela Manja and her ex-husband, Mohd Moiz.
Despite tremendous odds, the villagers of Bukit Koman have shown great fortitude to fight for their rights - their right to information, to clean air and water, and their right to life.
Because of their determination in protecting the environment and their community's well being, a vision that Wild Asia shares, we are proud to honour them as Wild Asia Heroes.
