Unutilised minerals

It is a mixed component of various minerals Zircon, Ilmenite, Rutile Garnet, Magnetite and Monazite etc, etc, found in huge quantity in Cox's Bazar, Teknaf, Inani, Mohskhali, Nijhum Dwip, Kuakata and some other coastal areas of Bangladesh.

Only a handful of persons might have seen the 'black-gold.' The President of our country, Prime Minister, Ministers, MPs, Secretaries to the government, teachers, students and scores of people might have read news and reports published in our various national dailies and magazines and watched some TV programmes on sea beach sands, the valuable minerals, of Cox's Bazar. Many meetings and seminars on valuable minerals have also been held in our country during the last three decades, but all in vain.

The authorities concerned do no pay any attention to the valuable minerals of Cox's Bazar. Sometimes the Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources, Minister of Science and Technology, Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission and others say that the minerals found in the coastal areas are not economically viable. Sometimes they claim that exploitation and utilisation of valuable minerals involve crores of taka, which the government cannot afford due to resource constraints.

Thus millions of tons of valuable minerals have been wasted and washed away in the sea and continue to do so till today due to negligence and inefficiency of the authorities concerned.

My contention is if we can produce salt and set up shrimp cultivation projects in the coastal areas and earn crores of taka, why can't we utilise the valuable minerals and why can't our people earn money?

It is true that separation and refining of the valuable minerals is a costly affair. But why can't we move step by step? Slow but steady wins the race.

Whey don't we first of all extract and collect the valuable minerals in crude form and export them for the economic benefit of our people? Why doesn't the government allow exploitation, commercial utilisation and export of the valuable minerals by the private sector?

It may be mentioned here that Bangladesh's mineral deposits are quite comparable with world's biggest and richest mineral deposits in Australia, Brazil, Russia, Sri Lanka and Malaysia.