People in Kokcha village do not know anything about world politics and events.Many of the people there do not even know who their President is. What they do know is how to extract gold from the hard stony mountains in their area.
People in Kokcha village do not know anything about world politics and events.Many of the people there do not even know who their President is. What they do know is how to extract gold from the hard stony mountains in their area. “I work from dawn to dusk”, said a 7-year old boy.Kokcha lies in a remote area of Takhar province, with the area around rich in gold. There are near 700 tunnels in the mountains which the locals have dug in order to extract the gold using primitive methods. There is only one mining contract awarded to a company. The rest of the area is mined manually by residents who do not have facilities either for digging, transporting or cleaning the gold.
Each morning the people of Kokcha go inside the tunnels. There is no criterion or qualification for this job. Children as young as 6 years up to older people aged 60 are engaged in this work. Serajuddin is one such person in search of gold. “I dig the tunnel as much as I can each day. I don’t have an exact measurement of how far I have dug the tunnel. I take out the soil and transport it on a donkey to the riverbed and separate the soil from the gold.”
Serajuddin’s reason for engaging in the backbreaking laborious work is the lack of other jobs. “No occupation is found here. The wheat crop is rain-fed. If there is no rain, there is no wheat.”
Seven year old Naqibullah is the bread winner of his family. “I work to get gold. I dig and then I smash the stone down to rubble. I carry this rubble to the river where I separate the gold from the soil. I work from dawn to dusk”.
Tunnel killer
The tunnels, one of the only sources of livelihood for the locals, are also a source of death. Once in a while a tunnel collapses, trapping the diggers. Locals say atleast 40 people have lost their lives inside the tunnels.
One man brings his son to work with him despite the risks because of the lack of any options: “Here there is no school, no government and no industry. I work day and night. Many of our co-workers died doing this dangerous work”.
While many work to extract the gold, others are engaged in trading it. Najimuddin is one such. He buys the gold from the diggers and sells it in the gold markets several hours away. But even this difficult stream of income may be drying up. Najimuddin has seen the volume of gold decrease drastically. “In the past the people used to bring four to five kgs of gold. Now this amount has reduced to 2 kgs”.
Customers come to the gold market from Kolfagan district, Taluqan center, Yangali Qala, Dasht Qala and other districts to the site. Gol Mohammad lives in Koktapa village in Rostaq district. It takes him 7 or 8 hours to come to the site where the gold is mined. “We don’t have facilities. People use Kokcha river water which is mostly dirty and polluted”.
No doctor, no government!
Kokcha village were the gold is mined is not just remote but isolated and cut-off. There is no sign of government in most of the villages. There are no health facilities here. The health provider here is Mohammad Musa. He brings his medicines form Takhar and Rostaq. “I walk for three to four hours and reach here to sell my medicines”, he says. His qualifications to administer medicines are not clear and he claims he treats animals as well as people. Even so, Muhammed Musa’s services are available to the people of Kokcha only once a week.
The provincial government of Takhar seems strangely unmoved. “People have a lot of demands that cannot be met within one year, two years and three years”, says Abdul Jabbar Taqwa, the provincial Governor of Takhar. “I don’t promise the people as a provincial governor does not have a lot of power and authority. Any provincial governor making promises is wrong. I do my best.”
It seems as if the people of the area will have to wait many years for their problems to be solved.
