Situation at Kumtor: Units work normally, smoothly, without problems

During the press tour, the journalists got acquainted with the work at Kumtor mine. Press service of Kumtor Gold Company (KGC) reports.

«Journalists of the leading republican and international mass media visited the main production sites of the mine, where they saw with their own eyes that the mine has been operating smoothly, in a regular mode,» the press service informs.

«There are no problems at the Kumtor mine. All units are working, production tasks are being fulfilled, there are enough spare parts, consumables, fuels and lubricants,» Nurdin Usenov, manager of the gold recovery plant and acting director of production at Kumtor Gold Company (KGC) told.

The head of the Mining and Production Department at KGK Tynchtyk Mokeev noted that the work at the mine did not stop and is carried out in compliance with industrial safety regulations.

According to him, the staff reacted with understanding to the imposing of temporary external management on Kumtor Gold Company CJSC, the mood of the company’s employees is good.

The journalists were shown a system for monitoring and scanning the sides of the pit and a laser system for monitoring the movement of glaciers. Senior Geotechnical Engineer Salamat Toguzbayev said that on May 15, 2021, access to the servers was closed from outside, while monitoring data continued coming. It was possible to restore access to the servers on May 19. No incidents were registered during these days.

«The head of the State Committee for Ecology and Climate, Dinara Kutmanova, told reporters what violations were committed during the development of Kumtor mine, and showed the journalists documents confirming non-compliance with environmental standards by the Canadian company Centerra. According to her, the rock dumps were earlier stored directly on the Davydov and Lysii glaciers. Since the start of development of the pit in 1995, more than 1 billion tons of waste has been placed on the glaciers, despite the fact that this is prohibited. Thus, according to Dinara Kutmanova, 186 million cubic meters of glaciers were destroyed,» the press service of the company notes.

The country’s chief ecologist added that to date, waste rock dumps are placed in the valley 10 kilometers below the level of the glaciers.

Media representatives were shown an open pit, Petrov lake, a tailing dump, treatment facilities, and a personnel camp.

According to the plan, the production capacity of the pit is 550,000 tons of rocks per day; 170 units of heavy equipment are currently involved there, 116 of them are dump trucks and 14 excavators.

According to the press service, the journalists were impressed by the scale and technological effectiveness of the project.