Jade miners’ hopes of fortune often become tragedy of addiction

Jade miners gather to use drugs at a trash- and syringe-littered camp near Sai Taung Village in Hpakant Township. (Photo: Htet Khaung Linn / Myanmar Now)


By Htet Khaung Linn

HPAKANT, Kachin State (Myanmar Now) - On a hill overlooking the scarred landscape of the Hpakant jade mines, five sit men huddled together in a dirty makeshift hut made from tarpaulins.
In hushed tones they help each other tie their forearms and inject heroin. Then they wait for the drug’s high to kick in and slip into oblivion.
In another ten huts at the site, which is located Sai Taung Village and littered with trash and used syringes, dozens more miners are gathered to spend their hard-earned cash on opium, cheap methamphetamine and low-quality heroin.
One of them is a 23-year-old, frail-looking man nicknamed Ko Shan Shei - or Brother Long Hair - for his long unkempt locks. He left his poor village in Sagaing Region’s Ye U Township for the mines in northern Myanmar’s Kachin State five years ago and worked here until drugs took over his life.
“Now I am addicted to drugs and I also sell it to others,” said Ko Shan Shei. “I buy two small tubes of opium the size of a fingertip and then I take a small amount to sell to other users so I can buy food.”
He is one the estimated 300,000 migrant workers who have come from across Myanmar to scavenge through mining waste in the hope of finding jade stone. Daily income levels are good in Hpakant, but living conditions are harsh and deadly landslides are common. Yet, the biggest threat to the men’s health is drug addiction.
Though there are no official estimates on narcotics use in Hpakant, local community leaders, such as Reverend Sai Naw, think that up to half of the miners use drugs.
Tint Soe, a National League for Democracy (NLD) parliamentarian from Hpakant Township, said there are a number of drug users camps spread out among the mines.
Across the whole of Myanmar there are about 83,000 injecting drug users, estimates the United Nations Office and Drugs and Crime. There is, however, a dearth of data and the organisation is currently conducting the first nationwide survey on the issue.

‘DRUG IS AN EASY CHOICE HERE’
Opium, heroin and meth are easily available in Hpakant and produced by ethnic rebel groups, pro-government militias and criminal gangs in lawless parts of Kachin and Shan states.
Like many of the men doing hard work at the mines, Ko Shan Shei said he began using drugs to relax and relieve physical pain - in his case he smoked opium to ease a persistent cough. But soon he found himself spending much of his daily income - around US$ 7 - on heroin, which is far more addictive due to the strong high when injected.
“The hard work makes labourers want to relax with alcohol, drugs and sex workers. Drug is an easy choice for the men here.” he said. “Illegal drugs can be purchased easily and money can be earned without much difficulty, so, there is more chance for drug addiction.”
One of the greatest risks for injecting drug users is HIV infection, which can happen when users share needles. A government service and several NGOs, such as the Asia Harm Reduction Network, provide methadone, clean syringes, as well as counselling and HIV testing for thousands of users in Hpakant.
Médecins Sans Frontières said it runs a clinic that provides antiretroviral drugs and other medicine to nearly 2,000 HIV/Aids patients in Hpakant, while it helps another 8,000 patients in four clinics in Kachin State.
Some NGOs organised into the Drug Advocacy Group have called on the new NLD government to scale up such services and shift to a rights- and healthcare-based approach to drug abuse problem.

CORRUPTED AUTHORITIES
While there are harm reduction services for the miners, law enforcement by authorities is largely absent and users at the site near Sai Taung Village made no effort to hide drug abuse. Some walked around with needles still hanging from their veins so they could easily shoot up again later.
Tint Soe, the MP, said drug dealers operate freely as they pay off local officials, police and military officers, while local authorities also lack capacity to control the vast mining area.
“Law enforcement cannot reach remote areas where there are (jade) scavengers, who are the regular customers for illegal drug dealers,” he said.
Pat Ja San, the vigilante anti-drug movement set up by the Kachin Baptist Church, is also active in Hpakant and has deployed its hardline tactics of sending groups of volunteers to apprehend dealers and users.
“We normally arrest drug dealers. When we find drug abusers, we seize the drugs and release them,” said Khu Lwam, a local Pat Ja San member.
He said last October the group nabbed a female member of a local drug-dealing ring who carried a ledger that recorded nearly half a million dollars in bribes paid to top officials, police and army commanders in Hpakant over the course of 58 days.
Pat Ja San has held on to the ledger out of distrust of local authorities and Tint Soe raised the allegations in the Lower House in February.

‘I DEEPLY REGRETTED MY SITUATION’
The Baptist Church-led movement also operates a rehabilitation centre near Hpakant called Uru Htwe San, a spartan camp with simple sleeping quarters that are surrounded by barbed-wire fences to prevent addicts from running away.
Rev. Sai Naw leads the camp where he tries to help about 50 men and women end their addiction solely through bible teaching - a method that has been criticised by groups promoting harm reduction.
“We have a difficult task to provide for all of them. We need land, food and accommodation - we cannot afford everything. There are so many needy (users) in the Hpakant area and we can help a small number of them,” he said.
A 29-year-old Kachin woman named Gar Lew said her husband, who earns about $8 per day from jade trading, sent her to the camp to end her opium addiction after she failed to care for their two children.
“I was willing to do so but could not control myself. I was angry when they brought me to the rehabilitation centre, but I am okay now,” she said.
Ko Shan Shei said he had returned to his native village twice to end his addiction, but relapsed every time he came back to Hpakant. He said he felt ashamed of life as a homeless addict.
“During the Water Festival, I saw some people happily celebrating but I was in dirty clothes,” Ko Shan Shei said. “I deeply regretted my situation when I compared myself with ordinary people.”
He added, “As I am still young I think I have enough strength to quit drugs. Hopefully, I will succeed this time.”

(Editing by Paul Vrieze)

In Mon State, expanding quarries threaten farms

Dust rises as rocks are broken into gravel at Yarmanya Company’s quarry in Paung Township, Mon State. (Photo: Phyo Thiha Cho / Myanmar Now)


By Phyo Thiha Cho

PAUNG TOWNSHIP, Mon State - On a recent afternoon in May, the farmers of Ohn Titbin Village Tract were tending to their betel nut and rubber plantations when a loud blast erupted at the foot of Kalama Mountain and shook the ground.
Workers had set off an explosion in a local quarry located about 10 km away and a cloud of dust drifted out from the area towards the plantations here in Mon State, southeastern Myanmar.
Farmer Nyan Htay said several blasts occurred every day after quarrying had increased in the area in recent years. The resulting increase in pollution, he said, has affected the local environment and the harvest of his 6-acre rubber plantation.
“I earned about 6 million kyats (about US$5,000) in previous years, but it has declined to just 3 million kyats,” complained the ethnic Karen villager.
Farmers in the area, which comprises six villages with Bamar, Karen, Pa-O and Mon residents, said that since 2011 authorities had allowed companies to rapidly expand the extraction of rock stone to make gravel, while paying little attention to its environmental impact.
Waste and dust has polluted air and water sources, they said, while explosions have disrupted the underground water table and caused cracks in the walls of local homes and Buddhist pagodas. Swathes of forest around the quarries that were used by villagers to collect firewood and food, such as bamboo shoots, have been fenced off.

POLLUTED CREEKS, EMPTY WELLS
Khin Hla Cho, a woman from Ywakalay Village, said access to drinking water had become problematic. “We have to dig new wells as the old ones have dried up due to the explosions,” she said.
Htein Lin, a 55-year-old farmer in Pa-O Su Village, said he relied on a now polluted local creek and sediments in the water had gradually covered 5 out of his 6.5 acres of land. “I could only complain to the village administrator about the damage to my land, but nothing else happened,” he lamented.
Anger has long been building among the communities. In 2014, they sent a petition with 1,200 signatures to the President’s Office but received no reply. Recently, they sent letters to the National League for Democracy (NLD) government in Naypyitaw and Mon State government demanding actions against the quarries.
On June 5, desperate farmers staged a protest calling on Long Life Aggregate Mining Company to cease quarrying.
Shwe Thaung, the Ohn Titbin Village Administrator, acknowledged the environmental problems, but said he was powerless to stop the companies as they had received long-running licenses from the previous government
“A creek that was a 100 feet wide in the past has now narrowed to about six feet because heaps of waste (from the quarries) were dumped in it,” he told Myanmar Now, adding that pollution had also affected his rubber plantation.

SUPPLYING EXPANDING INFRASTRUCTURE
More than 100 quarries have sprung up in recent years near the easily accessible mountains in Mon State, 22 of which are located in Paung and 48 in Kyaikhto township, according to Aye Zan, an NLD Mon State lawmaker who is studying the industry’s environmental impact.
On the eastern and western sides of Kalama Mountain, which dominates the region, six companies - Yarmanya, Long Life Aggregate Mining, Shwe Myint Moh Tun, Tun Tauk Sa, Azami and L.M. Jewellery - are extracting rock stone.
At the noisy, dusty quarries, dynamite and heavy machinery is used to break off large chunks of rocks from the mountainside, which are then crushed into gravel or smaller rocks that are loaded on to trucks.
The construction material is supplied to Myanmar’s growing number of road and infrastructure works, as well as government development projects, such as deep-sea ports and special economic zones at Thilawa near Yangon, and Kyauk Phyu Island off Rakhine State.
Tin Ohn, general manager of Shwe Myint Moh Tun Company, said it held a 30-year license to quarry 50 acres of mountainside, adding that the firm produced around 400 tons of rocks per day destined for Thilawa SEZ.
“We operate quarries at a rocky mountainside that is not suitable for agriculture. We have approval of the Mon State government,” he said.
Tin Ohn downplayed the quarry’s environmental impacts, but added that affected farmers would be paid around $80 if they can show that a young rubber tree was destroyed by the company.

GOVERNMENT ACTION?
Tin Hla, a senior member of the Agriculture and Farmers Federation of Myanmar, which is supporting local communities, said some companies were breaching environmental rules by operating in the vicinity of farms, but authorities failed to act against them.
“According to the rules, quarries must be set up about 4 miles (6.7 km) away from villages,” he said, adding that the companies made no effort to consult villagers or accept complaints about their operations.
Aye Zan, the NLD MP, said, “We can say for sure that these mining activities have negative environmental and social impacts, but we are still in the process of surveying all these mining sites in Mon State.
“After that we will table a bill in the Mon State parliament about this issue.”
Tun Ming Aung, a Paung Township state lawmaker with the NLD who raised the problems in the state legislature on June 2, said he would call for regulating the quarries when the complaints were properly documented.
“If people really suffer from these quarries we will try to stop them,” he said.
Min Kyi Win, the state's Minister for Environmental Conservation and Natural Resources, told Myanmar Now that the environmental impacts were a concern, but added that the quarries were an important source of state government revenue.
“If our country has sufficient revenue… we don’t need to break up these mountains,” he said.
Htun Ko, a 35-year-old farmer from Ook Tatar Village who has been protesting against Long Life Aggregate Mining Company, said residents’ livelihoods suffered greatly and he vowed they would continue to fight against the mining.
“Our campaign will continue until the companies moves away from this area,” he said.

(Editing by Paul Vrieze)

Abandoned babies indicate single mother, sex education problems

Shocked by-standers gather around an abandoned newborn found in Mingalar Taung Nyunt, and a lactating mother immediately breast-feeds the baby, on May 12. (Photo: The Voice Daily)


By Ei Cherry Aung

YANGON (Myanmar Now) - During a power blackout on a hot night in May, Thidar Han heard a baby crying at around 9 pm in back lane of Yangon’s Mingalar Taung Nyunt Township, where she works as a ward administrator.
Thidar Han ventured into the dark alley and saw no one, but the crying continued. As she moved closer she was shocked to find an abandoned newborn, lying face down and with its umbilical cord still attached, in a plastic bag.
“The baby was fortunately alive and without breathing problems,” she said, adding that shocked by-standers gathered around and a lactating mother among them breast-fed the poor newborn. The baby, weighing 4 pound and 12 ounces, was brought to Yangon Central Women’s Hospital just in time and survived after receiving intensive medical care.
According to officers at the Yangon Police Headquarters, it was the second baby to be abandoned by its mother in Mingalar Taung Nyunt Township in May. The other sadly died while it was being treated in hospital.
Records kept at the headquarters show the recorded cases of abandoned newborns nationwide. Though these are likely to be far from complete, they indicate a rise from 6 cases in Myanmar in 2011, to 4 in 2012, 9 in 2013, 12 in 2014, and 20 cases in 2015.
“Only unsolved child abandonment cases are reported to the police. So there might be other, unrecorded cases,” said an officer who asked not be named. Most cases occurred in Shan State and in Yangon, Mandalay and Magwe regions.
Some cases involved newborns who were left at back streets or at door steps, while most often new mothers left their babies behind in hospital after giving birth. Yankin Children’s Hospital recorded 5 such cases in 2015, 4 in 2014 and 2 cases in 2013, according to police records.

Desperate single mothers
Ma Htar, director of Akhaya Women, a women’s rights NGO in Yangon, said the tragic cases probably involved desperate women who had an unplanned pregnancy and felt they could not care for their babies due to poverty or because the father had abandoned them.
She said being a single, unmarried mother carries great stigma in Myanmar’s conservative society, while there are few services, either government or NGO, available that support such mothers.
“Single women are blamed for their fatherless child,” said Ma Htar, adding that services to help them “will emerge when Myanmar people have more knowledge about human rights.”
Ma Htar said old laws that punish abortion probably also put women in a situation of continuing an unwanted pregnancy, adding that politicians should reflect on the impacts of these laws.

Illegal abortion
Under the Penal Code, abortion can lead to 10 years imprisonment, though court cases are rare and usually result in a two- or three-year sentence. Due to such penalties, Myanmar has no official abortion clinics, forcing women wanting the procedure to do so through secret, unregulated medical practices.
Abandonment of a child younger than 12 year is also punishable and carries a maximum sentence of seven years in prison.
Nyein Nyein, 45, a widow and mother of four from Yangon’s Latha Township, said raising children was hard for poor women in Myanmar. She believes better contraception and legal options for choosing an abortion should be made available to women and girls.
“Abortion should be allowed systematically, as it is now being carried out illegally,” she said.
Under Myanmar’s civil law, a women who bore a child from a man who abandoned her can file a complaint to demand financial support.
A police officer in Panzundaung Township, who declined to be named, said such cases were rare. “Women do not file lawsuits against their irresponsible partners as they feel ashamed for the pregnancy. But actually, these men must be ashamed for their lack of care,” he said.
Kyee Myint, a Yangon-based lawyer who works on child rights cases, said more government funding should be made available to support vulnerable children and single mothers.

Government measures
The phenomenon of abandoning babies, either to be found or left to die, is sometimes called ‘baby dumping’, and occurs in many countries. It often involves unprepared young women, teenage pregnancy, and children born out of wedlock.
In Southeast Asia, the issue has reportedly become increasingly common in Malaysia in recent years, with 517 babies found abandoned between 2005 and 2011, often for reason of stigmatisation associated with having illegitimate children born outside of marriage.
In some Western countries, authorities have installed so-called ‘baby box’ or ‘baby hatch’, where a baby can be anonymously abandoned while ensuring that the child will be cared for.
Phyu Phyu Thin, a National League for Democracy Lower House lawmaker from Yangon’s Mingalar Taung Nyunt Township, said sex education and family planning programs would help address the issue of unwanted pregnancy in Myanmar, adding that such measures should precede discussions on legalisation of abortion.
“The main cause of this problem is that young people don’t have sufficient knowledge about sex. Since they don’t understand it, they have to cope with unwanted pregnancies. That’s why we have cases of abortions and newborn babies abandoned on the roads,” she said. “I think sex education and family planning would help decrease these cases.”
Aung Kyaw Moe, director of the Department for Child Care at the Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement, said poverty and the lack services for single mothers should be addressed, adding, “Educative programmes on reproduction should be conducted for young people to reduce abortion and child abandonment.”
Aung Kyaw Moe added that abandoned babies would be cared for at state orphanages.
According to the ministry’s website, there are five government child care centres for orphans and abandoned children in Yangon, Mandalay, Magwe, Mawlamyine and Kengtung. Children administered here are supported to complete primary school and are then sent to two centres in Yangon, where they can stay until the age of 18 and receive vocational training.
In Yangon, at the Shwe Gone Dine Orphanage Center, principal Khin Yu Dar Yee said the regional government’s Ministry of Health and Directorate of Social Welfare had put 128 children under her care in the past five years, 45 of whom were later adopted by families.
She said she could not comment on how many children there were abandoned, but stressed that regardless of particular background all are in dire need of care.
“I hope that kind and good parents can adopt them,” she said.

(Editing by Paul Vrieze)

Hpakant scenes: scarred landscapes, jade scavenging and drug use

By Htet Khaung Linn 

HPAKANT (Myanmar Now) - The Hpakant jade mines in Kachin State are believed to be Myanmar’s most valuable natural resource, with some estimates suggesting jade worth as much as US$31 billion is being extracted annually.
Little of this money ends up impoverished, conflict-torn Kachin State, as a web of hidden license-holders, often with links to the military, reap the mines’ benefits.
On the ground, the environmental damage has worsened after a decade of large-scale mining by dozens of companies. Hpakant now appears as a barren moonscape where whole mountains have been turned into rubble.
Among this rubble toil an estimated 300,000 migrant labourers who came from all over Myanmar. They chase the dream of getting rich by finding a big jade stone, but many end up drug addicted while scores are killed in accidents at the poorly regulated mines.
Myanmar Now reporter Htet Khaung Linn visited Hpakant in April and his photo capture some of the scenes.

Fearing extreme weather, farmers scale back rice cultivation

The drop in rice production follows the devastating impact of Cyclone Komen, which ravaged the farm sector with heavy flooding in 12 out of 14 states and regions from June to August last year. (Photo: Nyein Chan/ Myanmar Now)


By Phyo Thiha Cho

ZALUN Township, Ayeyarwady Region (Myanmar Now)— Aung Kywe remembers how he had to stand by helplessly last year when massive floods in the wake of Cyclone Komen affected Ayeyarwady Delta and destroyed half of his 14 acres of paddy.

That traumatic experience came on top of years of decreasing yields, Aung Kywe said, adding that this monsoon season he will leave much of his land in Kawkatkyi Village, Zalun Township, fallow to avoid loss of money with another failed harvest.

“Paddy plots on the lower-lying land are almost sure to be flooded,” he said, adding, “Paddy yields have also decreased year by year, from 100 baskets per acre to 75 baskets.” A basket of rice weighs around 25 kilograms.

In neighbouring Maubin Township, also located in the heart of Myanmar’s ‘rice bowl’ delta region, farmers spoke of similar measures to limit exposure to what many believe are increased occurrences of climate change-related extreme weather, such as drought, heat and floods.

Kyaw Minn, from Palaung village, said, “I will not grow monsoon paddy this year, but will cultivate other seasonal crops when the water level drops after the rainy season.”

Farmers in the delta generally grow two rice crops, one in the rainy season and one in the cooler season in lower-lying areas that are fed with receding flood waters. They might also grow a third, short-cycle crop, such as beans, in the hot months before the monsoon.

Thein Aung, chairman of the Independent Farmers League in Ayeyawady Region, said that because of rising concerns among farmers vast areas of land will go uncultivated this year.

“The farmers from our villages will not be growing paddy in a total of 200,000 acres situated on the low lands,” he said, before adding that the impact on overall paddy production would probably be limited as these fields are some of the least-productive tracts.

The Ayeyarwady Delta is home to many millions of subsistence farmers whose income and food security relies on their annual harvest, and to a lesser extent fishing.

The drop in rice production follows the devastating impact of Cyclone Komen, which ravaged the farm sector with heavy flooding in 12 out of 14 states and regions from June to August last year.

Some 260,000 acres of monsoon paddy fields were flooded and 52,000 acres damaged, according to official figures, which showed that the cyclone killed 120 people and affected more than 400,000 households.

Sein Win Hlaing, chairman of the Paddy and Rice Producers Association, said, “Rice production declined by 20 percent last year due to the weather’s impact.” He added that the fall in rice production would hamper Myanmar’s export, which stood at around 1.5 million metric tons of rice before 2015.

Cyclones and other extreme weather are set to increase further and this trend should ring alarm bells with the agriculture sector and the new National League for Democracy government, said Tun Lwin, an independent meteorological expert and former government official.

“Traditional agricultural methods are no longer suitable for the changing weather conditions,” he warned, adding that the monsoon would be shorter and produce more volatile weather.

Ba Hein, the Minister for Agriculture, Livestock, Natural Resources for Ayeyawady Region, said
development of the agriculture sector and of the water management infrastructure was ignored by previous, military-led governments.

“The delta has many rivers and streams, and these have not been properly managed,” he said, adding, however, that the state government had limited funds to improve water management infrastructure and that it was unlikely that the central government would provide more resources soon.

His administration, Ba Hein said, would focus on helping farmers find solutions to the changing weather conditions and boost overall agricultural development by, for example, launching new contract farming systems in cooperation with the Myanmar Rice Producers Association.

Thike Soe, an officer of the Agricultural Department in Maubin Township, said his department was trying to educate farmers about the changing weather patterns and the need to use different rice varieties in order to adapt to the changes.

“There will be a shortage of water supply for cultivation and crop yields may decline. So, they should grow rice seeds that can be harvested in a shorter period,” he said, adding that such varieties were available to farmers on local markets.

Soe Tun, chairman of the Myanmar Rice Association, echoed this idea but stressed water management should be improved in order to harness available water resources in times of drought.

“Myanmar has some alternative sources of water supply, including four major rivers. If the water from these rivers can be used efficiently, the country’s agricultural sector is sure to resurge,” he said.

(Editing by Paul Vrieze)

Could NLD corruption fight end ‘tea money’ for govt services?

A woman walks across the Sule Pagoda Road in downtown Yangon. (Photo: Hkun Lat/ Myanmar Now)

Dreams of riches and risk of death - a jade miner’s life

Maung Aye, a miner who has worked in Hpakant for many years, carries a piece of low-grade jade. (Htet Khaung Linn / Myanmar Now)

By Htet Khaung Linn

HPAKANT, Kachin State (Myanmar Now) - For much of the past two decades Maung Aye’s life has revolved around a daily routine that mixes the hope of finding sudden riches with constant danger and back-breaking work.

Every morning, the 36-year-old jade labourer gets up in the bamboo shack that he shares with other workers and walks down from the heap of mining waste on which it sits.

He goes down into one of the many mining pits that scar Hpakant’s mountains and takes out a small hammer mounted on a stick. One by one he taps rocks in the rubble dumped by mining companies, carefully listening to see if the sound could indicate precious jade mineral inside.

At the end of recent, hot April day, he returned to his miners’ camp with a rock half the size of a football, which he inspected with a special flashlight and valued it as low-grade jade worth around 30,000 kyats (around US$26).

“To get good quality jade depends on luck. Sometimes it is hard to find a jade stone worth 10,000 kyats in a week,” said Maung Aye, thin and muscular, wearing a traditional bamboo hat and shorts.

Though the money made in treacherous jade scavenging might seem small to some, it represents a good income to the tens of thousands of men who migrated here from poor, rural communities across Myanmar.

“Life is too hard for us in our home village, we can’t earn enough income, while we can easily get 5,000 to 10,000 kyats per day here,” said Maung Aye, who left his family home in Magwe Region’s Gangaw Township, central Myanmar, in 1996.

He recalled how he decided to go to Hpakant after fighting with his father. “At the time, I told my mother: I don't want to live in this house, please give me money and I will go away. She gave me 25 kyats,” he said, adding that he followed his older brother who was already working at the mines.

According to a recent state-run media report, there are some 300,000 men like Maung Aye toiling in the jade mines in northern Myanmar’s Kachin State.

Local journalists and activists said the numbers of men who migrated here has probably doubled since 2010, perhaps because stories of jade mining opportunities have spread more easily to remote communities in recent years as mobile phones and internet connectivity have become more widely available.

An increase in large-scale mining by companies using dynamite and heavy machinery has also increased the amount of rubble available for scavenging.

Those who own the companies that dump the waste on which Maung Aye and many like him live, make enormous, unregistered profits. Myanmar’s opaque jade mining industry has been estimated by resource corruption watchdog Global Witness to be worth up to US$31 billion per year and is controlled by hidden license holders mostly linked to the military elite.

Dangers and dreams of fortunes

The migrant miners are aware of the risks they take by working and sleeping near unstable piles of waste. These are dumped by the companies which have little regard for the largely unenforced safety regulations. The new National League for Democracy government has pledged to improve safety in Hpakant.

Maung Aye is stoic about the dangers and confident he can stay safe after many years in the mines. “I have got a lot of experience and know how to keep away from the falling waste, I was never injured,” he said.

Deadly accidents are a regular occurrence. A night-time landslide last November buried 114 migrant miners, according to the official death toll. Several accidents have killed groups of workers since then. Most recently, on May 23, at least 13 miners died in pit collapse.

Maung Aye said the November accident occurred near his camp and he saw the aftermath, adding that the number of deaths was probably several times higher than official figures as authorities had stopped searching for buried corpses after two days.

“Scavengers and machinery drivers from mining companies died, maybe 300 in total, under waste dumped near the site of Mya Ya Mone Company,” he said.

The poor men are willing to face such deadly risks as many dream of finding a large, valuable jade stone that will lift them out of poverty.

Maung Aye got his break in 2002, making a small fortune by Myanmar standards when he and his friends found a jade boulder worth around $7,000.

Maung Aye said the gem find turned his life around and he went back to his home village to enjoy his newfound riches and to kick a drug habit he had developed a few months before. Heroin and opium are easily available and used by many workers.

“I was so happy at home as I could save and bring a certain amount of money for my family. I drank alcohol almost every day with my friends and forgot about the (withdrawal symptoms) I got from quitting drugs,” he said.

Yet, he struggled to use his savings to set up a profitable business in his impoverished village and after eight years at home he returned to Hpakant. He now plans to stay until he feels he has enough income.

“I feel life is more meaningful here than in my village, I can expect to make a lot of money. This is our dream as scavengers,” Maung Aye said. “I can send money to my family and stay here with friends - but I am lonely.”

(Editing by Paul Vrieze)