Two killed in mine collapse

The two men, Miftar Losha, 54, and Albert Losha, 35, died in hospital on Sunday after they were severely injured in the collapse at the abandoned mine.

The Ministry of Economy and Industry said on Monday that the mine belonged to a company that had ceased operating more than three years ago.

“Mining inspectors found that the victims were working in an illegal-informal way in a gallery that had ceased operations and were working without technical supervision,” the ministry said in a statement.

Chromium is the most important metal found in Albania and has been extracted since World War II.

But chromium mines went bankrupt after the fall of Communism in 1991 due to the low prices of the metal on the international market and the cartel-like nature of the chromium trade.

Between 1999 and 2001, the Albanian government gave away extraction rights to hundreds of small companies.

Market conditions improved for Albanian chromium in the years that followed, but the authorities failed to enforce safety conditions and scores of miners have lost their lives while local gang lords battled each other for control of the resources, resulting in a number of killings.

The current left-wing government promised to combat wrongdoing in the country’s chromium industry by cancelling dozens of extraction rights.

But the company that owned the mine where Sunday’s accident happened still held the extraction rights despite ceasing operations three years ago, and had not secured the gallery to prevent dangerous illegal mining.

Balkan Insight,  01.09.2015