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Dhaka Friday,  Mar 29, 2024

Dispute with Contractor At Maddhapara: Mining Stopped

EB Report

Hard rock mining from the Maddhapara Hard Rock mining facilty stopped suddenly without any prior notice from the contractor firm of the mine field. About one thousand of workers of the mine got jobless for the prevailing discord between the authority of Maddhapara Granite Mining Company Limited (MGMCL) and the contractor firm Germania-Trest Consortium (GTC).

The GTC, a consortium of Bangladesh-based Germania Corporation Limited and Belarus-based JSC Trest Shakhtos Petsstroy was selected as the contractor of the Maddhapara granite field in 2014. It has stopped producing hard rocks from Saturday without giving any prior announcement.

GTC general manager Jamil Ahmed said that, MGMCL general manager (operation) Mir Md. Abdul Hannan has been impeding GTC in various ways and that is why they stopped mining. He said that, GTC won’t go back in operation until the MGMCL general manager is removed.

Md. Abdul Hannan, the MGMCL general manager (operation) said that, GTC was given its current duty in 2014. From the very beginning they started to show excuses and on 23rd September of 2015 they stopped operating showing the cause of inadequate equipment. Afterwards, equipment worth around 100 crore taka were bought according to their demand but GTC couldn’t manage to go for full scale production yet after two years. He further added that, he’s not the all in all of the mining field and GTC’s such claim is irrational and baseless.

MGMCL managing director Eng Mahmud Khan said that, a contractor can’t stop operating without giving any prior notice-this is surely a violence of the policy. He added that, he is investigating the issue.

Earlier on 2014 the state-owned MGMCL signed a deal with the GTC to produce about 9.2m tonnes of hard rock, worth Tk20.7bn over six years. As per the contract, the GTC would work on the project for the following six years, at an estimated cost of $171.86m. However, according to the deal and calculation, GTC was to produce 6,000 tons of hard rock in daily basis, but sources claimed that the contractor has been able produce only 2,000 tons per day which have triggered discontent between mining field authority and contractor.

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