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Migrants Flock to Ratanakkiri for Gem Mining
The second-largest town in Ratanakkiri province isn't on most maps of
Cambodia. That’s because
Chum Beisrok, full of shacks, holes in the ground and ethnic Khmers and
Vietnamese hoping to strike it rich, didn't exist until two years ago.
About 15 km south of the provincial capital of Banlung, at the
intersection of Lumphat Barkeo and Banlung districts, about 2,500 people
dig for gems and other valuable minerals.
The miners sleep in hammocks underneath the shells of homes still under
construction or they rent space in houses recently completed. During the
day, they work in groups, using hand tools to dig deep, narrow holes in
search of gems and gold. Children descend into the holes and pass up
buckets of dirt, which are sifted through by hand.
At the end of the day, miners sell what they have found to middlemen.
Many
make between $2.63 and $3.94 a day. They buy what they need from the four
or five small shops set up around the new homes. Two years ago, there
were just 20 people mining, according to Jeremy Ironside, a consultant
to Non-Timber Forest Products, an NGO in Banlung that works with hill
tribes. But now it is a boom town. Chum Beisrok is “ like the wild
west in America over 100 years ago, when there was gold, “ said Dr
Seshu Babu, who recently visited the area with the National Malaria
Center.
While the miners in chum Beisrok have found a short-term way to support
themselves and their families, their presence illustrates a problem that
has come to this remote, resource-rich province in recent years.
The increasing number of people moving to Ratanakkiri in search of work,
land and money is threatening the province's lush environment and the
unique culture of the province's indigenous hill tribes. When the
province's natural resources have been exhausted t, the ability of hill
tribe villagers to sustain themselves will be exhausted too, officials
say.
Most of the miners, according to government and NGO officials, have come
to the province in recent years from lowland provinces and Vietnam. Some
of them have moved from other in Barkeo and that are now few have even
come from Pailin, the Thai border town once famous for its gems until
officials declared last that most had been mined.
Near Chum Beisrok we Tampuan hill tribe villages that traditionally
depend on farmland and forests. But the sudden demand for housing near
the mines has meant that many of the area's trees some of the best and
biggest in the province, according to Ironside are being felled for
buildings.
Near the mining areas are a number of waterfalls that could be made into
a tourist attraction, bringing much-needed revenue to the Tampuan
villagers.
But mining has put the pristine waterfalls in danger of running
an ugly red. Upstream, miners search for shiny minerals by
rinsing the red soil after digging it up, sometimes using water pumps.
The runoff makes its way into the stream that goes on to the waterfalls.
Ironside is trying to persuade provincial authorities to make the
waterfalls and forests a protected area Before Khmer New Year in April,
his NGO hopes to set up a program in which local hill tribe villagers
can sell handicrafts and charge entrance and parking fees at some of the
waterfalls.
This would be modeled on a similar program Non-Timber Forest Products
helped bunch at Yak Loem, the volcanic lake and nature reserve near
Banlung that was once a private retreat for the Prince Norodom Sihanouk
and is now a popular tourist attraction. The provincial government
formed a committee last November to oversee the miners, but there has
been little regulation of their activities, according to first deputy
governor Vorn Chhunly. For example, there is no requirement to
rehabilitate the land by filling in the holes after the digging and
mining is finished, he said.
There has been small-scale mining in the province for years, even among
hill tribe members, according to Vorn Chhunly.
But now that Cambodia has achieved peace for the first time in decades
and is developing a market economy, the province is facing increasing
pressure as more people try to make money from mining.
Ironside is trying to get provincial officials to look ahead to a time
when the gems have been completely mined.
"Now, everyone is busy making money with gems," he said.
"But what happens when the gems run out?"
Until recently, gems and timber were lucrative sources of income in
Pailin, the former Khmer Rouge stronghold in the northwest. But when the
gems ran out, so did the Thai companies that had poured millions of
dollars in the area during the early 1990s, helping to fund the Khmer
Rouge insurgency
Now, most people in the town are still poor, according to Mai Meak, chief
of cabinet for Pailin municipality.
"Pailin should be an example for other provinces who have
mines," he said. “ Mining did not help to improve the living
conditions for our people.†| 
