 each as an insurance payout, the Sözcü daily reported on Thursday.){kind=link}
The families of nine miners buried under a landslide contaminated with cyanide and sulphuric acid at a gold mine in Turkey’s eastern Erzincan province will receive just 150,000 lira ($4,670) each as an insurance payout, the Sözcü daily reported on Thursday.
A devastating landslide at the Çöpler gold mine in the İliç district of Erzincan left nine miners trapped. Rescue efforts were halted a week after the incident as the threat of further landslides loomed, plunging the families and community into despair.
Although the policy limit for mining accidents was recently increased to 1 million Turkish lira ($31,145), the families of the victims are exempt from this change and will have to settle for the paltry sum of 150,000 lira ($4,670).
The compulsory personal accident insurance policies, the new limit of which became effective on Monday, promised significant increases in claims payments to the families of mining victims. However, a provisional article excluded the İliç disaster, which occurred more than a month ago, thus denying the updated benefits to the families of the nine miners.
On February 13, some 10 million cubic meters of soil contaminated with cyanide and sulfuric acid tumbled down the mine’s heap leach pad. The slide, which plunged 200 meters, buried miners and triggered an investigation into the mine’s environmental and safety measures. The mine, a joint venture between Turkey’s Çalık Holding and SSR Mining, based in Denver, Colorado, was criticized for its handling of the disaster, while the government was lambasted for lack of proper oversight.
With the arrest of three engineers this month, a total of nine people have been arrested for their responsibility in the disaster, including several executives from the mining company, one of whom is a Canadian citizen.
The authorities assured that no contamination was found in samples taken from the landslide area. However, experts dispute these claims and argue that contamination of the soil with cyanide and heavy metals is inevitable due to the wide area in which toxic materials spread without any protective measures.