PONDA: Prior to the ban in 2012, mining was a booming business in the State and everyone involved in the sector, either directly or indirectly, was flush with funds and had huge savings too. So, when the first ban was imposed, the dependants could fall back on their savings reserves to tide over their financial crunch.
Since 2012 till the restart of mining in 2016, the mining dependants had exhausted their savings and reserves. When the mining restarted, they had to take loans to restart their respective businesses – be it repairing or buying trucks and other machinery connected with mining or restarting ancillary and support trades.
However, before the mining dependents could recover from the impact of the 2012 ban and repay the loans taken for restarting their businesses, the mining activity has been shut down once again from Friday, which has hit them hard than the 2012 ban.
“This time most of us are loan defaulters, which we borrowed to restart our business. When we were just recovering from the earlier ban and hoping for a promising future, the mining has been closed down once again,” said a mining dependent.
Truck owner Shilpesh Parab said, “Prior to the 2012 ban, mining was a boom, as such our businesses flourished and we had savings which helped us tide over the ban period. But now we have no savings. In fact, due to slow pace of mining, we were struggling to get sufficient business to meet our livelihood. We are also loan defaulters and the banks are not ready grant fresh loans to start some other business.”
Worried over the second closure, the mining dependents are spending sleepless night thinking as to how their children would pursue education; how they would meet their daily necessities without an income; and how would they clear the loans borrowed to make their trucks roadworthy.
