Nizampur’s area of Nowshera used to be so desolate, that an old adage of Pashto described him as “Nizampur Na Ukhwa Bal Thanana Nishta Aw Siphai Na Landi Bal Uhda” (there is no police station beyond the NIZAMPUR and there is no position underneath from the agent standing in police).
But today, Nizampur is no longer a stretch of earth to be looked at with pity. The area is enjoying a gold fever, thanks to the Indo, who intersect through it.
The entire section of the Nowshera district from Kund to Nizampur, where Indo’s turquoise waters merger with muddy torrents of the Kabul, has seen a large -scale pleasure mining.
A group of excavators aligns the riverbank from Kund to the railway bridge of the British era that connects Nowshera with Atock in Punjab.
Despite ecological concerns, the attractiveness of gold in the Indo has turned a desolate area into a bustling mining center
Throughout the day, the excavators hit their heavy Auges in the depths of the river and take out their cubes full of mud and stones.
Several workers prove their luck by extracting gold particles from this sand with gold carpet.
Thanks to this mining, publishing at the Nizampur Police Station has become “very lucrative” these days, said a police officer designated on the railway bridge Sunrise.
He said that gold mining of pleasure in the Indo and Kabul rivers has “transformed” the area economically.
Abdullah, a young store, said that gold mining of pleasure in the Indo River has increased in recent years.
There used to be small -scale mining in the river, but in recent months, it has become a large operation as a large number of excavators bury their cubes in the bed of the day and night.
Sunrise He counted more than 50 excavators who took the bottom of the river from Kund Park to the Attock Khurd rail bridge, a distance of about four kilometers.
The workers, mostly local, were evasive in their answers and did not reveal how much gold they discovered every day.
“It’s hard to know, and many search engines have gone bankrupt while trying to hit the fat prize,” said Javed Khan, a local gold miner, when asked about mining.
They paid RS2,000 daily, while other workers obtained RS1,500.
RS800BN reservations
The golden deposits of pleasure in the Indo near Atock arrived at the headlines earlier this year, after a news report that claimed the discovery of gold deposits that amount to RS800 billion near Atock.
The claim was made by former Minister of Mines and Minerals of Punjab, Ibrahim Hassan Murad, in a declaration of social networks.
His claim was based on a report, “Potential Evaluation of Gold of Pleasure in the Indo River in the district of District”, prepared by the Pakistan Geological Service (GSP) for the Department of Mines and Minerals of Punjab.
Sunrise He contacted a GSP official who prepared the report, but refused to discuss the findings.
“Yes, we have carried out an investigation study and we present our findings to the Department of Punjab mines and minerals, but we could not discuss the report, since now it is the property of the department,” said the official.
Another study, ‘Economic Evaluation of Gold of Pleasure along the Indo River of Ghazi to Kund, KP: Implications for the Commercial Scale Plant’ carried out by the National Center of Excellence in Geology of the University of Peshawar in 2019, he said that The maximum gold reserves in Kund, areas of Beka and Allahder were found along the Indo River.
He said that the Indo River was well known for the occurrence of gold of pleasure since the element was extracted locally from several places.
“The sediments of the current originated in the exposed rocks due to the weather and transport by the action of the currents and rivers,” the report added.
Legality
Interestingly, Punjab, which has a Kund stone shot, has banned gold mining of pleasure in the river inside its borders.
However, said an official of the District Administration of Nowshera Sunrise that mining in Nowshera was legal.
The mining leases were issued by the Department of Mines and Minerals of KP at a cost of RS5BN, said the official who did not want to be appointed.
Another department official said that four blocks for gold mining of pleasure were auctioned last year by RS4.93 billion.
They included block A on Swabi-NOWSHERA, Block B in Nowshera, Block C in Nowshera-Kohat and block D in Kohat.
A posterior auction for another 13 blocks attracted zero bidders.
Environmental concerns
The rise of gold mining of pleasure has worried about environmentalists who say that excessive excavation of river beds was disturbing aquatic life and changing river channels.
The locals claim that the use of mercury in the extraction of gold has damaged the river ecosystem.
Abdullah, a place, said the fishermen have complained about finding fewer fish in the river since the beginning of large -scale mining.
Last month, the Superior Court of Peshawar sought a report by the KP Environmental Protection Agency on the impact of the mercury used in Gold Mining in the Khushal Gar area of Kohat.
The locals had called the use of mercury in gold mining, an environmental danger that contaminated the air and the river and also affected their agricultural lands adjacent to the mines.
An official from a mining department said Sunrise that the use of mercury for gold extraction was illegal. He affirmed that the department takes measures against those who participate in illegal mining.
Posted in Dawn, February 17, 2025
