"Grim toll from Indonesia’s abandoned mines may get even worse: Report", 19 February 2021

At least 168 people, mainly children, have died after falling into abandoned mining pits across Indonesia over the past seven years, according to a new report.

The report by the Mining Advocacy Network (Jatam), an industry watchdog, identifies 3,092 abandoned mining pits scattered throughout 13 provinces. Most of them, 1,735 pits, are in East Kalimantan province, the coal heartland of one of the world’s biggest producers and exporters of the fossil fuel.

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Between 2014 and 2020, 168 people died after falling into these pits, according to Jatam; 24 of the deaths were recorded in 2020 alone.

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Cases like these abound, Jamil said, because of the failure by companies, often willful, to rehabilitate their concessions after their operations end; and the failure by authorities to enforce the rules.

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“There’s even a case where the police refused to investigate the death of a child in a mining pit in Samarinda because the victim was disabled,” he said.....

Jamil was referring to the case of Ardi, who drowned at the age of 13 in a mining pit in the concession of mining company PT Cahaya Energi Mandiri in May 2015. Ardi was hearing impaired and relied on his mother to take care of him.

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PT Cahaya Energi Mandiri denied any responsibility for the pit, saying it had formed naturally and was not the result of the company’s mining activity.

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Besides deaths caused by abandoned pits, mining activity has also triggered conflicts between companies and communities affected by the environmental degradation and water and air pollution caused by mining and associated industries. Jatam lists 116 mining-related conflicts from 2014 to 2020. The largest number, 45 cases, broke out in 2020, compared to 11 conflicts in 2019.

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