‘Gun disease,’ a condition afflicting miners who use air guns to extract tin and tungsten, is killing hundreds in Kayah state
The sound of a machine piercing the bedrock buzzes inside a deep, dark hole. Barely visible in the dim light, two young men covered in dust are hard at work.
They are using a high-powered air gun to get at the precious tin and tungsten inside the hole. Their masks are caked with dust.
The technique they are using is called “gun-drilling” by the local people who do it for a living. It’s a lucrative job that employs hundreds of people in the area. But it is also notorious for the toll it takes on miners’ lungs.
They are among the thousands who work the Mawchi mines in Kayah state’s Hpa Saung township.
Most in this once famous mining area, which has been producing for more than a century, spend their days shovelling loosened ore into carts and pushing it out into the open air.
But it is the gun-drillers who do the dirtiest and most dangerous work. They stay inside the pits, inhaling dust for hours at a time. After a few years on the job, it begins to penetrate their lungs the way their tools break through the rock face.
Black lungs
The condition is called pneumoconiosis, or more colloquially, “black lung disease.” But locally, it is known as “gun disease,” and it is a killer. Most of its victims are young men, like Ba Ye, the husband of 30-year-old Aye Sandar Tun, who lives at the mine site in Mawchi’s Kyauk Kyar ward. He died six months ago.
Aye Sandar Tun first came to Kayah state as a migrant worker from Pyinmana in central Myanmar. She met and fell in love with Ba Ye, who was ethnic Kayah, in Loikaw. They then moved to Mawchi, where Ba Ye had been working since 2009. She worked as a cook for 150,000 kyat ($112) a month at the Mawchi No. 2 pit in Kyauk Kyar and he became the pit foreman. Then, in 2016, he decided he wanted to make more money.
“He said he would start gun-drilling because it was much better paying. I agreed with his decision because I didn’t know any better,” she said.
After about three years, he started to have health problems. Medication relieved the symptoms for a while, but as his immune system weakened, the persistent coughing and fever returned and got steadily worse.
Aye Sandar Tun said she believed her husband’s condition was so bad because he didn’t wear a mask when he worked, and because the vibrating gun that he used to do his job pressed against his chest while he was drilling.
She said she wanted other miners to know about the danger of working this way, and warned them not to destroy their health for money.
Mining for the military
With a population of around 30,000, Mawchi is believed to have lost hundreds of its inhabitants to “gun disease,” a condition for which there is no cure.
Margaret Sein, a former health officer in Yukorkho, a village in the Mawchi area, told Myanmar Now that no one knows exactly how many have died from lung disease as a result of gun-drilling. However, she said that over the past six years, she has seen hundreds of miners with severe lung damage.
Mawchi has been an important source of tin and tungsten since the colonial era. These widely used metals can be found in many manufactured products, from cans to military materiel such guns, shells and missiles.
The Mawchi mines are currently operated by the Kayah State Mineral Production Company (KMPC), which has been run by the military-owned Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited (MEHL) since 2002. Last year, the company renewed its license to mine in the area for a further five years.
In August of last year, the deputy minister for natural resources and environmental conservation, Dr. Ye Myint Swe, informed the Pyithu Hluttaw that the Mawchi mines had produced 8,410 metric tons of ore, including 2,559 metric tons obtained by the state, since 2002.
In practice, most operations have been controlled by the Ye Htut Kyaw Company, through a joint venture with the military, since 2009. Ye Htut Kyaw, the owner of the company, is a former military official who became the Pyithu Hluttaw MP for Hpa Saung township after running as a Union Solidarity and Development Party candidate in the 2010 election.
The Ye Htut Kyaw Company is licensed to mine an area of about 7,000 acres, which includes more than 200 sub-sites allocated to local people. The company purchases a specified amount of ore from these sites at a fixed price, and then sells much of it to China. Most miners are day labourers who work without a contract with the company.
“I heard about the effects of gun-drilling before I started doing it. But we come here to make money. Right now, I’m financially okay. But it means that we risk our lives for money,” said Thu Thu Aung, a 23-year-old gun-driller
The pit foreman is responsible for ensuring the safety and security of each mine site. The foreman, who is also called a frontline master, usually has five to 10 men working under him, and will earn up to 30,000 kyat ($22) a day, depending on his experience. Regular workers earn 8,000 kyat ($6) a day.
This contrasts with the 40-100,000 kyat a day that even an inexperienced gun-driller can earn. They are paid 2,500 kyat for each 2.5-foot-deep hole they drill, and in pairs, they can make 30 to 50 holes a day.
The Ye Htut Kyaw Company buys the ore for between 5,000 and 16,000 kyat per pound, depending on the quality. However, according to a local pit owner, the same amount of ore fetches as much as 22,000 kyat on the black market, where it can also be sold without testing.
This is an attractive option, one pit foreman explained, because samples that would once have easily have passed testing are increasingly—and suspiciously—rejected by the company these days.
Waiting for the day of death
Gun-drilling appeals mostly to young people looking to make more money than they could any other way. Thu Thu Aung, a 23-year-old labourer, has been doing it since he arrived in Mawchi two months ago. He said he makes enough to send 400,000 kyat a week to his home in Mandalay region’s Sint Kue township.
Thu Thu Aung spoke to Myanmar Now at Margaret Sein’s clinic, which he has visited three times already, complaining of fatigue and dizziness. He said he was aware of the risks of his job.
“I heard about the effects of gun-drilling before I started doing it. But we come here to make money. Right now, I’m financially okay. But it means that we risk our lives for money,” he said.
Margaret Sein explained that many gun-drillers start to develop symptoms after about two months on the job. She said it usually starts with a cough, then night fevers, and then weight loss. After a while, they begin to look like tuberculosis patients.
Many, in fact, do develop TB, she said. After they come to her, they are referred to the relevant health department, where they may be put on medication to treat TB. But in their weakened condition, she said, many suffer severe side effects.
“I don’t think I will ever recover from this illness. It seems as if it will just keep getting gradually worse,” said 59-year-old former gun-driller Saw Khu Htoo
“Every time they are diagnosed with TB and given treatment, our patients have to pay a great price with their lives,” she said.
Ba Ye, Aye Sandar Tun's husband, was initially diagnosed with pertussis, or whooping cough. At first he was given medication, but when that no longer worked, he was sent to Loikaw hospital, where he underwent surgery. But his condition continued to worsen, to the point where he couldn’t breathe without the help of an oxygen tank. Finally, two months after testing positive for tuberculosis in March of this year, he died.
“He didn’t want to take the TB medicine, so we told him it would get rid of the disease,” Aye Sandar Tun recalled with tears in her eyes.
Intervention: the best medicine?
Inside a small hut with bamboo walls behind the high school in Lokhalo, a village in Hpa Saung township, Saw Khu Htoo is preparing a meal with slow and heavy motions.
Saw Khu Htoo is 59 but looks more like a man well into his seventies. He has worked as a gun-driller for more than 20 years and now suffers from chronic lung disease.
“When I walk, I feel very tired. I have a bad cough, and sometimes I spit up blood,” he said.
He said he started developing whooping cough about three years into the job. Treatment helped and allowed him to continue working, but eventually he decided it was time to quit. By then, however, it was too late.
He has lasted a lot longer than many of his fellow gun-drillers. He reckons that around 70 of his former co-workers and acquaintances have died during his years in the mines. While he has been luckier than most, however, he knows that his own drawn-out decline will never be reversed.
“I don’t think I will ever recover from this illness. It seems as if it will just keep getting gradually worse,” he said in a slow, tired-sounding voice as he cooked.
According to Margaret Sein, a lot more could be done to prevent gun drillers ending up like Saw Khu Htoo or others who have been even more unfortunate. To begin, she said, supervisors should receive more training about the dangers of the job, and workers should be given health insurance.
“The owners are the only ones who are getting rich in Mawchi. They have money coming in from all sides. The young people who come here from far away are the real victims,” said Margaret Sein, who runs a clinic for miners.
She added that new workers should be provided with protective equipment and also be taught how to use it properly before they enter the workplace. This was, she insisted, the responsibility of the licensed mining companies.
But the single most important thing that could be done, she said, would be to institute regular check-ups. Workers should be thoroughly examined every six months to ensure that any signs of incipient lung disease are detected early.
Not everyone is in favour of intervening on behalf of the gun-drillers, however.
Yan Naing Swe, a member of the state parliament representing Hpa Saung Township, said that actually, mining companies don’t recommend using air guns. This was, he said, a choice made by foremen, who don’t follow official health guidelines because of their own greed.
He added that it wasn’t the government’s place to direct and supervise the pit foremen. At best, it could teach workers to use protective equipment, he said.
He also said he saw no need for an outright ban on gun-drilling, without which mining would be too costly for the mine owners.
But Margaret Sein dismissed any suggestion that profitability was more important than safety. This emphasis on the bottom line comes at too great a cost to miners, she said.
“The owners are the only ones who are getting rich in Mawchi. They have money coming in from all sides. The young people who come here from far away are the real victims,” she said.
Applying the law
Companies that receive mining licenses from the government should be held responsible for what happens to miners who work in their designated areas, said Win Myo Thu, an environmentalist familiar with the situation in Mawchi.
This is, in fact, the law, he said, pointing to the Occupational Safety and Health Law passed by the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw last year. Under this law, companies are required to draw up plans to protect both part-time and full-time employees.
This means that the Ye Htut Kyaw Company and its joint-venture partner, the MEHL, should share the cost of implementing safety measures for gun-drillers and other workers at the Mawchi mines with pit operators, he said.
So far, however, none of the parties involved have shown any interest in meeting their legal obligations to their workers.
Aye Sandar Tun said she called the pit owner three times for help when her husband was hospitalized in Loikaw, but never received any assistance. The big bosses, she said, seem to take the attitude that their only responsibility to their workers is to pay them for their labour. They are not under any contract with the miners.
A widow at 29, Aye Sandar Tun must now raise her three-year-old son on her own. Her greatest hope is to save enough money to buy a small piece of land in Loikaw and start a farm.
To others thinking about coming to Mawchi to make money, all she had to say was that it wasn’t worth risking life and limb for the sake of people who don’t care if they live or die.
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