Word: goldings
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...grimmest examples of how the collapse of government authority will blight the land and its people for generations is unfolding at the northern tip of the island of Sulawesi, where, like Femmy, thousands of people work in illegal gold mines and processing units. When Jakarta's word still counted, the army would have thrown out the miners?as they did at other similar sites?and allowed Australian firm Aurora Gold, which had won rights to mine the area, to go about its business. Even critics of the mining company say its modern equipment would have produced a fraction...
...nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) working to contain the damage at Talawaan. "They take money, of course." It is a cozy arrangement. And a lucrative one, too. According to a recently completed report compiled by Dames and Moore, the area's illegal miners produce up to 55,000 ounces of gold a year, worth about $15 million...
...miners working 12-hour shifts in the hills see little of the gold they bring out of the earth. Although working underground in makeshift mud tunnels is highly dangerous?occasionally fatal?it is the workers in the processing units who are in the gravest immediate peril. Unlike Femmy, whose baby was born with tragic deformities, many of the workers say that after educational campaigns by NGOs and the local government, they now know mercury can harm them. But the risk is more than offset by the high wages?nearly $50 a month, or double what they could make from...
...just the workers who are in danger. Some 6,000 villagers live around the 300-odd processing units, which operate in the area and spew out some 150,000 tons of mercury-laden slurry into the environment annually. Many of them are frightened, too. But such is the gold fever gripping Talawaan that they don't dare speak...
...processing unit has just started work under a palm-thatched roof in the village of Tatelu. Fecky, a civil servant with the local government, lives next door. On this sunny morning he wanders over to watch the proceedings, his six-month-old daughter Indah?with gold hoop earrings, huge eyes and a mass of black curls?perched on his left shoulder. His 12-year-old son Dedy comes with him, scrambling over the stacked bags of ore and splashing with yips of delight through the lake of muddy water that surrounds the unit, all of it contaminated with mercury...