PESHAWAR: Mine owners have held Pakistan Stone Development Company (Pasdec) responsible for the heavy losses caused to national exchequer owing to the closure of mines in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

“We have invested millions of rupees in the business by constructing roads, purchasing machinery and hiring hundreds of workers, but Pasdec has failed to honour the agreements reached with the investors,” said Haji Abdul Jalil, general secretary of the Mines Owners Association, while talking to mediapersons here on Wednesday.

Flanked by other officer-bearers of the association, Mr Jalil alleged that owing to wrong policies of the company mining sector was at the brink of destruction. He demanded of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government to reopen all the closed mines and facilitate the owners so they could play role in strengthening the province’s economy.

The mining and mineral sector, he said was the only large scale revenue generating sector, which needed to be promoted and developed, but unfortunately, exploration of all the mines, including model quarries, had been stopped because of ‘corrupt officers’ in Pasdec.

The Pasdec, he said had been established in 2007 to cooperate and facilitate the mine owners in order to develop the sector with exploration through modern technology to avoid fragmentation of expensive stones and marble.

“Induction of non-technical people in Pasdec, who even didn’t know about basics in the relevant field, has damaged the mining sector and caused losses of billions of rupees to the national exchequer,” said Mr Jalil.

The miners’ leader said that Pasdec was run by the ministry of production and industries and international organisations also provided funds to it to enhance the sector in order to export minerals abroad for generating handsome revenue.

He said that as per rules the company was bound to invest 70 per cent and the mines owners 30 per cent as a joint venture. “According to the agreement, Pasdec has to form management committees and operate a joint account with mine owners and keep vigil on expenditures on purchase of any modern machinery for exploration of model quarry because the payment for the machine is given through the joint account.”

Mr Jalil said that it was also duty of the company to set up training centres for labourers on how to use modern machines in the field and in which area a mine was to be selected.

Published in Dawn, May 22nd, 2014