How People Cheat on Coal Mining Industry

Trap houses

About 2 months ago, I was doing a survey with my team to get some soil samples in Tanjung regional of South Kalimantan. That was my first time doing job there, about 4 hours trip to get there away from my place. It's a land sustainability evaluating project, so I took some soil samples to be analized in laboratory to find its fertility and conclude what kind of plants that suit with the soil characteristic. 

The space between the spots of samples were about 500 meters and me and my team had to get 100 samples in 4 days. It's my first time adventuring into the wild of rubber plantation. And I got this picture shown above. You may find it strange to know the fact behind why those houses were built. Could you guess it? how about the idea that those houses are just traps? the fact says yes.

There's some big coal mining activities there in Tanjung, is it ok if I say I found the coal layer at the depths of 40 cms from the top of the ground? That's why the biggest coal mining in South Kalimantan found in Tanjung. I think all the landscapes in that regional almost contain big mount of coal, and the ground covered by rubber plantation owned by native people. Can you get the conflict that may seem to be exist in that case? Yes, the coal mining corporation doing enlargement of their mining activity area which the land is owned by the native people.

The people there must know that their land contains much coal inside, but the culture there doesn't know such massively environmental destruction, they prefer to plant rubber and earn money by selling it. But coal mining industry won't let the rich land sleeps tight, they bought the land from the people with high price. Some people sold it with pleasure and go for doing hajj next year (note: the culture here is when you have much money to go hajj, that the first thing to do other than another economical strengthening activities), some who didn't want to sell it would find they land stood among the hole where the coal had been dug. 

Land clearing activity

That's  the political trick used by the mining corporation, so how the people trick the corporation back to earn more payment than the ordinary price the land belong to? they built houses on the land, in the middle of rubber plantation, so when the mining corporation wanted to buy their land, the houses counted as the price of living place, it's more expensive than only having a large of land with just the trees over there.


What a phenomenon! unfortunately I had no time to do some interviews, just a simple talk told by my guide when surveying the land. Need more facts to discover about the eco-social cases around the coal mining activities.