NEWS media reported that 3.60 lakh tonnes of hard rock produced at the Maddhyapara Granite Mining Company Ltd (MGMCL) with a market value of around Tk 55.24 crore has apparently gone missing. This came to the fore just weeks after another concern of the state-owned Petrobangla, Barapukuria Coal Mining Company Ltd (BCMCL), could not say where 1.45 lakh tonnes of coal it had produced over the years went. Stock at the MGMCL shows that about 3.60 lakh tonnes of hard rock is not there and the officials are claiming that this was due to years of system loss, poor record keeping, hard rock sinking into the ground, and the produced rock not being handed over to the company.
Until 2013, Korean Company Namnam commercially produced around 15.35 lakh tonnes but handed over 13.08 lakh tonnes to MGMCL. Officials at the mine are now saying that this discrepancy, a deficit of 2.27 lakh tonnes of rock which is around 14.79 per cent of its total production until 2013, was due to weighing error and system loss and that it had not been corrected over the years – echoing the coal disappearance and gold adulteration. Interestingly, in 2012-2013, Nanman produced 2.81 lakh tonnes and delivered the same to MGMCL.
After coal scandal caused nationwide outrage, Petrobangla on July 26 formed a four-member body to assess the loss of hard rock (granite). The MGMCL authorities raised the missing-rock issue before its seven-member Board of Directors on July 29 attaching a probe report. They claimed that measurement error, system loss, rock mixing with soil, the absence of scales at crushing and sorting plant, unwanted materials in produced rocks, washing away by rainwater, dust, mud and handling losses over the years caused the shortage.
The swindle of hard rock by the mine officials should be intensively investigated as it is a sharp breach of their terms and conditions. Such large-scale corruption cannot go unattended.
