By Luis Jaime Acosta
BOGOTA (Reuters) – Some 60% of operations at Zijin Mining’s Colombia gold mine have been halted because of recent attacks against workers, allegedly carried out by illegal miners allied with a major crime gang, the company said on Friday.
The mine, a top producer of gold in the Andean country, has suffered two attacks over the last two weeks. The incidents killed two and injured 15.
“The mine is not operating in 60% of the underground complex, which is affected by illegal mining,” Zijin, whose largest shareholder is the Chinese government, told Reuters in an email. “There exists a risk to the life and safety of the workers.”
The mine, in Buritica, Antioquia province, produced 7.68 tonnes in 2022, the company said.
Workers should wear body armor and have police protection to shield them from gun attacks and use of cylinders of propane gas as explosives, the president of the Colombian Mining Association (ACM) guild said this week.
“This doesn’t happen anywhere in the world, that mining company workers need to go to their work areas with body armor,” Juan Camilo Narino told journalists on Thursday. “The immediate intervention by the Colombian state is urgent…so this doesn’t happen again.”
The defense ministry did not have immediate comment.
Thousands of illegal miners work in dangerous conditions in dozens of tunnels and clandestine processing locations around Buritica, some within Zijin’s concession.
The tunnels are controlled by the Clan del Golfo crime gang, which buys output, a Reuters investigation showed in 2021.
Zijin bought the Buritica mine for $1 billion in 2019 from Canada’s Continental Gold, which also suffered worker deaths at the site because of attacks allegedly committed by illegal miners.
Four mining companies carrying out gold and copper exploration have closed their Colombia operations so far this year because of security problems and economic uncertainty, Narino said, and problems at Buritica risk 4,200 jobs and $95.4 million in tax and royalty payments.
(This story has been corrected to say 7.68 tonnes instead of million tonnes in paragraph 4)
(Reporting by Luis Jaime Acosta; Writing by Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
