A miners strike at the Maddhapara granite mine since November 25 has delayed hard rock mining at the site in Dinajpur.
The mine, operated by Maddhapara Granite Mining Company Limited (MGMCL), a company of Petrobangla under the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources, was expected to start production under a new contractor in January next.
A total of 308 workers of the MGMCL Workers-Employees’ Union have been staging a demonstration outside the company building since they went on a strike for indefinite period, pressing home a five-point demand.
Managing Director of the company, Mohammad Moinuddin, yesterday told the Dhaka Tribune that if the workers did not agreed to get back to work, they would ask the new contractor, Germania-Trest Consortium (GTC), to recruit fresh miners to continue rock extraction.
“We have already assured them of fulfilling some of the demands, including a salary hike. But it’s not possible to make their jobs permanent or give five suspended workers’ their jobs back, as the matter is in court.”
However, Khairul Islam, president of the miners’ union, claimed that the authority would not be able to hire new workers, as the current ones were skilled, and the new recruits would take at least six months to one year to become well trained.
“The Court has ordered them to give us our jobs back, but the authorities are holding up the decision. They can make our jobs permanent if they want. We will not join work until these two demands have been met,” he said.
Their demands include job regularisation, providing a 20% dearness allowance, putting an end to lay-offs, re-appointing retrenched workers, and stop to the appointment of miners by outsourcing.
The workers started the work abstention after the company started handing over the mine to the Germania-Trest Consortium.
On September 2, the state-owned MGMCL signed a deal with the Germania-Trest Consortium to produce about 9.2m tonnes of hard rock, worth Tk20.7bn over six years. The MGMCL, country’s only hard rock company, has been mining rocks at the site since 1994.
Mohammad Moinuddin said Germania-Trest Consortium (GTC) would work as a contractor to develop and operate the mine. It would increase the mine’s hard rock production to 5,000 tonnes per day from the present 900 tonnes.
As per the contract, the GTC will work on the project for the next six years, at an estimated cost of $171.86m. They will produce 9.2m tonnes of hard rock during the contract period.
The GTC, a consortium of Bangladesh-based Germania Corporation Limited and Belarus-based JSC Trest Shakhtos Petsstroy, was selected for the project through a tender process contested by five international companies.
The hard rock mine was discovered through a Geological Survey of Bangladesh (GSB) in 1974 at a depth of 136 metres at Maddhapara, Parbatipur in Dinajpur.