SHILLONG: Lakhs of litres of water have been pumped out of the ill-fated mine at Ksan where the 15 miners are trapped and a few more in the vicinity, but there has been no appreciable drop in the water level to allow Navy and NDRF divers to go in safely.
“The water keeps getting replaced” has been the official refrain over the past 35 days that the rescue operations have been on.
“They have been doing it all wrong,” a seemingly annoyed Manik Ali told The Shillong Times on Thursday.
Manik Ali’s 20-year-old younger brother Monirul is among the trapped miners.
Manik, who hails from Chirang district in Assam, said he has worked in such mines and knew how the water needed to be pumped out.
“They (at Ksan) keep switching off the pumps. How can you expect to drain out the water when you do that,” he said. According to him, sordars in the mines would run pumps without stopping to keep the mines dry.
“There are some mines where there is less water seepage and there you may run the pumps for a couple of hours to draw out the water, but in mines like these the pumps have to work continuously,” he said. “It is obvious water will come in when the pumps are stopped,” he said.
He said the water could have been drained out in 15 days if it was done properly even with 25 HP pumps.
“Maybe we would have been able to retrieve my brother’s body intact if that had happened,” he said.
