Quang Nam provincial authorities and its people were full of hope when they laid out the red carpet to welcome Besra, the Canadian investor, to the Phuoc Son and Bong Mieu gold mines. But they have had to pay a heavy price for the decision.

The foreign miner did not bring prosperity and develop the local economy as expected. The majority of the local people are still poor.

Hoang Hoa, Chief Secretariat of the Phuoc Son District People’s Committee, said that the district has reaped no benefits from the gold mining project. Besra once promised to build some public works, but it never did.

The foreign miner, while making money in Vietnam, did not respect Vietnamese laws. It has refused to pay tax arrears worth hundreds of billions of dong.

While local authorities and people have seen no gains from the mining projects, their land has been exhausted because of exploitation, the environment has become more polluted with chemicals used during the mining process, and the forests have been chopped down to make room for factories.

When reporters arrived in the Phuoc Son Gold Factory area in Phuoc Duc Commune of Quang Nam Province in late August, they were prevented from entering the factory, though the entrance gate was open.

The factory is located on a hill, surrounded by an old forest. A local man said in the past there was a vast forest with old trees. However, a large area of the forest was destroyed to make room for the factory.

Hamlet 4 of Phuoc Duc Commune is just two kilometers far from the gold factory.  This is a poverty-stricken locality with only several permanent houses and many cottages.

“A gold factory is nearby, but we cannot get any benefits from it,” said Nguyen Van Dung, head of Hamlet 4. “Only 27 workers have been recruited by the factory. Eighty-six households out of 114 households here are listed as poor households.”

Dung said the investor built a seven-kilometer road linking the HCM City Road and the factory to serve the exploitation, a clean water station which broke down after one month of use, and helped a local resident build a house worth VND20 million. The children in the commune sometimes received books and schoolbags.

In return, local people have had to live with noise, dust and toxic chemicals produced by the factory. The locals in hamlet 4 have many times demonstrated against the discharge of cyanide into the environment.

The road that links HCM City Road and the factory is now seriously degraded. “The company took away more things than it brought,” Dung said.

An official of the Phuoc Duc Commune authority confirmed that the Phuoc Son Gold Company in 2013 tried to chop down trees on an area of two hectares, and the plan was only prevented when locals reported it to district authorities.

Source: NLD