KOLAR: Gold is sizzling as an asset now. But there are no visible signs of a revival of the mines that once produced it — Bharat Gold Mines (BGML).
Once the pride of the district, BGML had 4,500 employees when it was closed down 15 years ago on March 1, 2001.
Service benefits of its former employees have not been settled yet and quite a few of them have passed away too.
Although the Union government decided to reopen the mines in 2006 and the Supreme Court gave a ruling in favour of a revival of the century old mines, nothing concrete is taking place on ground now.
When the then second deepest gold mines were closed, the prices of the yellow metal was `500 per gram. Ironically the price has now shot up nearly six times.
People of the district want the mines revived by either the state government or the Centre as they can generate employment to thousands of people. Cyanide dumps at KGF only evoke the nostalgia for former BGML workers.
The dumps are an accumulation of slurry waste and residue piped out after gold was extracted from ore. After the closure of the mines, multinational companies evinced interest in taking over the cyanide dumps for extraction of gold with advanced technology. But nothing has happed till now.
People of the district are also pitching for underground mining as open cast mining is not environment-friendly.
Nodal Officer Appointed
KGF: The State government has appointed Ramanarayana Gowda as the nodal officer to facilitate filing of investment proposals for taking up gold mining in KGF.
JMJ Minerals director and chief executive officer G Jaya Kumar said his company had submitted a proposal during the recent Invest Karnataka global investors meet to take up gold mining (shallow mining) in tail dumps at KGF with an investment of `500 crore.
The State government came forward to provide support to take up the project and an MoU was also signed with it, he said on Tuesday.