Moolamylliang recovers from rat-hole mining 

Moolamylliang recovers from rat-hole mining 

Part of: GS Prelims and GS-I – Key natural resources & GS-III – Environment

In news

• Moolamylliang, a village in Meghalaya’s East Jaintia Hills district, is making progress in becoming a greener place amid abandoned pits from the rat-hole mining.

Key takeaways

• National Green Tribunal (NGT) banned hazardous rat-hole coal mining in Meghalaya in April 2014 and set a time limit for transporting the coal already mined till that time.
• The Jaintia Coal Miners and Dealers’ Association claims there are some 60,000 coal mines across 360 villages in East Jaintia Hills district. 
• Moolamylliang used to be one such village until the National Green Tribunal’s ban.

Do you know?

• Rat-hole Mining is a term used for a hazardous and arduous mining technique where miners crawl into winding underground tunnels that are just 4-5 feet in diameter to extract coal from the deep seams with a pickaxe.