Hasni says the hospital cannot deal with emergency cases and has no ambulance service. This company has earned billions of dollars in the past twenty years, yet it has failed to reshape the socio-economic landscape of our region.” Mir Arif Jan Muhammed Hasni, lawmaker from Dalbandin, Chagai in Balochistan Assembly Mir Arif Jan Muhammed Hasni, a member of the Balochistan Assembly, said: “So what if the company has set up a school, a hospital and provided electricity to a few thousand people in the vicinity of its project? NGOs have long been doing such things in far-flung areas of the province. We also spoke to a lawmaker from Chagai who is sceptical about the claims made by the mine’s managers. “Despite extracting gold and copper for two decades, why has the administration not yet constructed a metalled road? There are roads that lead to the company’s sites, but many villages are left without any roads.” Notezai told The China Project. The mine creates jobs but are they good ones?Īkbar Notezai, an investigative journalist from Chagai associated with Pakistan’s leading media group Dawn recently published a report which said that the jobs created for local people are “menial” and the overall situation in the region is “pitiable.” ![]() “More than ten thousand people visit the facility for checkups, diagnosis or treatment each year,” he said. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The China Project that the mine has created more than 2,000 jobs and has helped to pay for a hospital which uses ultrasound, X-ray machines and other advanced equipment. However, a spokesman for the Pakistani side of the business emphasized its corporate social responsibility objectives, including better education and health facilities, more employment and flood responses. “Mud houses, muddy and unpaved roads, a lack of potable water, poverty, deprivation, underdevelopment and backwardness still rule,” said Baloch. Kazim Baloch, political activist in Chagai However, Kazim Baloch, a political activist in Chagai told The China Project that the area still has “features of the medieval era”. Hé Xùpíng 何绪平, the general manager of MCC, said in a January press release that the has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to provide clean water to the area, as well as arranging free electricity and improvements to schools. The Chinese government maintains that the benefits to the Pakistanis are significant. Locals say the military presence is intrusive. There are checkpoints manned by members of a Pakistani paramilitary force known as the Frontier Corps. Tight security surrounds the mining complex. Image for The China Project by Syed Fazl-e-Haider. The area has a “medieval” feel, say locals Saindak village. But it is not clear from public documents how costs are calculated nor how the accounts for revenue are kept.Īnd ordinary local people certainly don’t feel as though they are seeing any benefits from the mine. The lease was later extended, with Pakistan’s share of revenue up to 53%, and 5% to 6.5% going to the Balochistan provincial government. The agreement was for 50% of revenues from the mine go to MCC, 48% go to the Government of Pakistan, and 2% go to the Balochistan provincial government. ![]() (MCC), a subsidiary of China Metallurgical Group Corporation. Pakistan and China signed a formal contract worth $350 million for development of the mine, initially a 10-year lease to to Metallurgical Corporation of China Ltd. The Saindak Copper-Gold Project was set up by Saindak Metals Ltd, a company fully owned by the Government of Pakistan, by the end of 1995. ![]() The district of Chagai, which contains Saindak, lies close to Pakistan’s border with Iran. In the Balochi language, the word saindak, from which the main town takes its name, means ‘black mound’.Ĭopper and gold deposits were initially discovered near Saindak in the 1970s by Saindak Metals Ltd (SML) - a company wholly owned by the government of Pakistan - in collaboration with an engineering firm from China. However, many local people told The China Project their lives have not improved much. So what benefits has the community enjoyed as a result of this intensive operation? Supporters of the mine say it has helped to fund better education and health facilities, as well as creating jobs. It plans to continue there until 2037, when it expects the resources to be depleted. The company, known as Metallurgical Construction Corp (MCC), has been operating near the town of Saindak in Balochistan’s district of Chagai for more than twenty years.
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