Ashish Kumar/West Champaran. The Manguraha range of Gaunaha block of the district is an important part of the Valmiki Tiger Reserve. This area comes under Division 01 of VTR. A special river named Pandai originates from the mountains located here, which keeps carrying very small particles of gold with it all the time. The local people living around the river are well aware of this. In such a situation, they divide themselves into different groups and collect very small particles of gold from the river and earn their livelihood by selling it.
Kailash Oraon, a local resident who extracts gold from the river, says that the river is very shallow, so the gold particles are separated from the stones and sand without the help of any machine. For this, every group keeps a special wooden plate with them. First of all, the pebbles and stones present in the water are collected at one place with the plate. After which only sand is left there. Now when that sand is lifted on the plate, the gold particles present in it also start sticking to the plate. The sand is removed from the plate by pouring water lightly on it. Due to being very light, the gold particles remain stuck on the plate. In this way, by doing this process several times, a few carats of gold dust are collected throughout the day.
Every day 3 to 4 ratti gold is extracted
Vishwanath Yadav, a local resident who is extracting gold, says that this work takes a lot of time. His work starts every day at 6 am and continues till 6 pm. Despite 12 hours of hard work, his group is able to extract only about 3 to 4 ratti of gold every day. Since the gold extracted from the river is in the form of ‘dust’, it is taken home and melted in a furnace and then converted into solid and sold in the bullion market.
Gold is sold at half the price
The point to note here is that the gold collected from the river is sold at a price much lower than its fair value. Kailash says that he gets only 600 to 800 rupees for one ratti of solidified gold. According to Anil, a resident of Bagaha in the district and a gold trader, one ratti of gold is equal to 160 milligrams. Currently, the price of this much gold is around 1200 rupees. In such a situation, now you can understand that the local residents are selling the gold collected from the Pandai river at almost half the price.
Tags: Bihar News, Gold, Gold Traders, Local18
FIRST PUBLISHED : September 15, 2024, 13:39 IST
