The fate of a gold digger, sad stories

(Baonghean) - Currently, there are hundreds of young people from Ky Son and Tuong Duong working as gold miners in the South Central provinces. Most of them are from Quang Nam. This is a job that faces many risks, even death, but due to lack of jobs, many people still follow the gold mine owners to work for hire. There have been tragic deaths of young people in the highlands where the forests are wild and the water is poisonous.

Tragic deaths

After Tet, Moong Van Luyet (1993), a native of Luu Thang village, followed a gold mine owner from Nam Dinh to Quang Nam to work. Twelve days later (February 25, 2013), bad news came: Luyet swam across the river and died of "suffocation". A week later, the body of the unfortunate person was brought back. Mr. Moong Pho Son, Luyet's father, said: "The family wanted to open the coffin to see, but they said they couldn't because it had been nailed down. After that, they quickly buried him." Regarding the cause of Luyet's death, the family only knew thanks to a photocopy of the incident report made by the Ca Dy Commune Police (Nam Giang - Quang Nam).

Unable to bear the torture of the gold mine owner, Luyet and Moong Van Quang, a fellow gold miner from the same village, ran away to work for a local man named Nguyen Van Tao to earn money to return home. A few days later, they drowned. Nearly two months after her husband's death, the young widow Moong Thi Chuyen was still bewildered. She was now nearly three months pregnant and would have to raise her child alone.

A gold miner named Moong Van Son in Cham Puong village (Luong Minh - Tuong Duong) said: If they meet a good-natured gold owner and do well in business, the gold miners are paid about 100,000 VND per day. When they are "unlucky" and cannot find gold, the mine owner is ready to run away or fire the workers. In such cases, the gold miners have no choice but to starve, ask for work for another mine owner, or work for hire, or even beg for money like beggars to buy a bus ticket home.

Born in 1996 but having worked as a gold miner for over 2 years, Son shared: "You have to be healthy and have good endurance, otherwise you will be exhausted or sick from fly bites." Meals often consist of only rice with fish sauce, and you sleep without blankets. Working from dawn to dusk, being beaten and not getting paid is the life of gold miners in Quang Nam. Once, while hiding from a raid, Son had a chance to escape the gold mine and immediately returned home to get married. Although he was not old enough to get married, Son decided that only by getting married would he avoid having to dig for gold. At home, his friends were away at work, and he was depressed, so he wanted to go see a foreign land and earn money to help his parents. "I thought about it, buying a pig and raising it with my wife is better, bro." - Son confided.

Not being able to escape, Lu Van Tu (1997- Cham Puong village) had to die in a foreign land. According to Son, Tu, who was gentle and weak, fell ill at the gold mine. Sick and bedridden, the owner of the gold mine named Khuong (Nam Dinh) immediately had someone carry a stretcher down to the gold mine and force him to "work to pay off his debt". Later, Tu died while being treated at Hue Central Hospital. It was almost Tet Quy Ty (2013), but Mr. Lu Van Nguyen still had to sell his only cow to go to Hue to bring his son's body back for burial. His family was already poor, and had to spend tens of millions of dong to pay for his son's funeral, making Mr. Nguyen's family even more exhausted.

For many days now, Mr. Lo Van Tien's family (Minh Thanh village - Luong Minh - Tuong Duong) has been sitting on hot coals. In the house, there is T (1996), who has been out of school for a long time, and is helping his parents in the fields. In early October 2012, the family did not see their son return home, so they immediately went out to look for him and learned that T was hanging out in the village and was lured into following a car with gold diggers to Quang Nam. The village has no phone signal so they cannot contact their son to find him.

Through a person who specializes in contacting people for the gold mine owners in Ta Thoong village (Chieu Luu - Ky Son), Mr. Tien felt somewhat reassured when he heard that his son would return home to celebrate Tet with his family. However, during the recent Tet Quy Ty, when he was able to contact his son, Mr. Tien learned that the gold mine owner did not pay him and was stuck at the gold mine. Half a month ago, someone from an outside village ran in and gave him his phone number, telling Mr. Tien to call his son immediately, only to hear that his son had escaped from the gold mine and was brutally beaten. T only had time to say: "Dad, take the money to pick me up" and then hung up. Later, T called again and said he had escaped from the gold mine and was stranded in Quang Nam. The family was restless, worried about the fate of their son who had not yet reached adulthood.

In Ta Thoong, La Ngan, Luu Tien, Luu Hoa, Xieng Thu (Chieu Luu - Ky Son), Minh Tien, Dua... (Luong Minh - Tuong Duong) villages, there are also hundreds of people working at the gold mines in Quang Nam. Ta Thoong village police officer Luong Van Ha said that in the village, there are also people who have just returned from the gold mine and have not been paid. The mine owner promised to send money to pay, but everyone knows that it is almost certainly an empty promise.

Of hundreds of professions, choose gold mining as your profession.

Asking the gold miners, most of them know the sad story that happened to Lu Van Tu (Cham Puong village) and Moong Van Luyet (Luu Thang village). However, the number of people coming to the gold mines is still increasing.

Cham Puong villagers said that since the beginning of 2013, there have been dozens of trucks carrying workers from villages along the road from Chieu Luu to Bao Thang (Ky Son). Now that the asphalt road is clear, gold miners under the name of businesses come to recruit workers. The trucks stop right in the middle of the village, and the "recruiting officers" search for people. Anyone who agrees to go immediately gets on the truck without having to submit a job application or request a temporary leave of absence. Even the family doesn't know.

After the harvest season, lacking work, people in Cham Puong village (Luong Minh - Tuong Duong) can only stay at home and play.

Cham Puong village chief Mr. Ngan Van Mai said that because of this type of labor recruitment, the management board often cannot know the exact number of people in the village who go to the gold mines. Mr. Mai only estimated that there are currently about 40 people in the village selling their labor at the gold mines. Based on information from village officials, currently in the communes of Chieu Luu (Ky Son) and Luong Minh (Tuong Duong), there are no less than 200 people who regularly go to the gold mines in Quang Nam.

A gold miner above is Ngan Bun Huong, 20 years old, living in Cham Puong village, who started the job in 2008 and just returned home because he was not paid. He said: Not only in the communes along the Chieu Luu - Bao Thang route, but also young people in remote villages in Mai Son and Luu Kien communes (Tuong Duong) also follow the gold mine owners to Quang Nam. The Party cell secretary of Luu Thang village, Mr. Cut Thanh Son, said that in the village there are currently over 30 people digging for gold in Quang Nam. Most of these people are young men from 14 years old and up. There are a few middle-aged people and women who cook and do laundry. Sometimes after five or seven months, sometimes a few weeks, the gold miners return to the village, then continue to go back to the gold mine.

Economic difficulties and lack of jobs are still the main reasons why young people in the highlands still seek to sell their labor at the gold mines. After the rice-growing season, in the 10th and 11th lunar months, young people of the Khmu and Thai ethnic groups in the highland communes can only sit at home and wait for the next rice-growing season. Minh Thanh village (Luong Minh) alone has 389 people with only 1.5 hectares of wet rice fields; productivity is low and the main source of food depends on rice. No one in the village has yet to go to high school. In Cham Puong village, village chief Mai said that many people in the village have returned from college but have not been able to find jobs for several years.

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