Silicosis, Health Care & Human Rights
After the beginning of large scale mining, the workers at Kolar became prone to various diseases related with breathing and lungs. Silicosis was one of them. It is a progressive disease affecting the lung and is caused by inhalation of the fine silica dust from the mines over many years. This disease was identified and diagnosed in the workers of the Kolar Gold Mines immediately after BGML took over operations in 1972. Treatment of Silicosis was taken up as a health care priority by BGML and the disease was successfully tackled and preventive measures put in place. BGML ran a multi discipline hospital and poly clinic for its employees and the local people and concentrated efforts were made to diagnose and treat miners for all mining related ailments. With the closure of BGML the hospital also closed down and much suffering resulted. Recently, a local NGO run by a well known philanthropist from the area decided to intervene and it is currently in the process of rejuvenating the hospital.
The devastating effects of the closure of BGML on the township of Kolar and the lives and health of its people have been starkly brought out in the PUCL Bulletin of May 2004 which carried a Report by Justice H. Suresh, Dr. Jeevan Kumar, Geetha Menon, and Advocate Manohar Hosea after a Public Hearing on "Violations of Rights of Workers at the Kolar Gold Fields". The public hearing was organized by the South India Cell for Human Rights Education and Monitoring (SICHREM) on 21 February 2004. Earlier, in a brilliant article published in the Liberation (2001), N. Divakar brought out in graphic detail the comprehensive misery inflicted by the government and the management on the ex-employees of BGML (The Decay of a Public Sector Mining Township – Social Investigation). This has been further elaborated upon by Parvathi Menon in the Frontline magazine (Volume 19, Issue 11) of May 25 – June 7, 2002 in an article titled “Death of a Mine” in which, she describes in chilling detail the descent of the thousands of ex-employees of BGML and their families into indebtedness, destitution and death by suicides.
Read more about this topic: Bharat Gold Mines Limited
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