By SAMPSON BONAI
SOME illegal gold miners are still digging for gold at the conservation area at Wau Ecology Institute despite warning from police to stay away from the site.
Illegal mining was still going on when The National visited the now-devastated area on Wednesday.
Two young boys – Jeffrey Henry and John Ayata – were busy filling up their empty bag of rice with soil from a 2m hole told The National gleefully during the visit that they were happy with what they were doing as they were making around K200-K300 a day from the deposit they were collecting.
They said they rushed to the area to dig last week as soon as news broke out in town of the gold rush.
They also said that they had been making good money since then.
The National was later taken by another miner, Samuel Tep, on a guided tour of the devastated area measuring around 300m of conservation land and shown the land being dug up.
Coffee trees and protected species of trees were uprooted and the land turned upside down with holes measuring about 2m to 3m.
Mr Tep later told The National that before news of the gold rush broke out the first people to dig there were “very fortunate”.
“Many illegal miners, who first carried out mining activities here before news broke out, had made over K100,000 because gold was just there on the top soil,” Mr Tep claimed.
Police had to go into the area on Monday to stop the illegal miners.
Wau Ecology Institute insect ranch manager Michael Hudson said telecommunication services were also cut off as the miners had dug up the pole that carried the cables.