Rock mining at Maddhapara suspended over lack of explosives

Hard rock production in the country's lone Maddhapara Granite Mining field has been suspended due to lack of ammonium nitrate explosives which is required to crush stone layers beneath the ground.

Germania-Trest Consortium (GTC), the developer of the mine suspended the production on Saturday morning.

Prior to the production halt, GTC was producing around 5,500 tonnes of hard rocks per day to meet the growing demands in different development projects.

The production closure is likely to create a crisis, according to industry stakeholders.

The Maddhapara Granite Mining Company Limited (MGMCL), responsible for the mine and the supply of explosives to the mine developer, assured that production will resume at the earliest.

Md Abu Taleb Farazi, general manager at MGMCL said that the mine has not been receiving adequate ammonium nitrate explosive for the last two years due to Covid-19 pandemic.

"The production could resume by 27 March as a consignment of explosives is scheduled to arrive in the country by 23 March," he said.

Sources at the MGMCL said that there is a demand of 1.5 tonnes of explosives every day to produce the hard rock.

MGMCL has been sourcing the required explosives from India, China, South-Korea and Thailand. But in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the supply of explosives was disrupted, leading to a crisis.

At present, the country has an annual demand of 1.5 crore tonnes of rocks, of which MGMCL supplies 6%.

The granite market, which is worth Tk6,000 crore, has a massive 20-25% annual growth that is met with imports.

Due to the production suspension, the civil construction works of a number of mega projects including Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant, Matarbari Plant and the construction of Hazrat Shahjalal Airport's third terminal and railway projects will be in trouble as they depend on the supply of rocks from the Maddhapara Granite Mining Company.