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MCC Tongsin Resources Limited (MCCT) worked with the Pakistani brothers to resist snowstorm that the history has never seen before. The MCC company made donations to help the local victims out of the disaster, and managed to resume production operations in the severely hit region.
By: Liu Qijia, Tang Zihui, MCCT
In January 2008, the temperature of the Saindak region of the Belochistan province of Pakistan went down dramatically after a period of sprinkle, followed by blizzards and rains that swept the region and the local communities afterwards. The surface of the road was covered with frozen ices, multiple water pipelines broke because of the low temperature. The telegraph poles were blown down by gales, which block the passage of the mining vehicles. Water and electricity was in great shortage, and the project operation and the daily life of the staff there were affected greatly.
Since the production restart of the Saindak copper facility five years ago, this is the first storm encountered by the company. The severe weather lasted for more than half a month, the local residents who lived in this area for nearly 80 years said that they never had such severe weather before.
The Saindak project was established based on the weather statistics in early 1990s. And at that time, the designers did not think much about the possibility of a spell of severe weather, let alone its negative impact on the operation facilities.
Facing such condition, MCCT employees fought against the storm day and night to ensure the proper production operation and the daily life of the local staff. They employed machines to break the ices on the road to facilitate the passage of vehicles. They did relevant maintenance works on the project site, and took concrete measures to prevent the equipment and pipelines from being frozen. And they spent great effort in the recovery of water and electricity supply, and reestablished the communication facilities. They did all they could to keep off anything that might endanger the employees, Chinese or Pakistanis. All the canteens helped each other during the snowstorm, the canteens that had power supply sent cooked food to those that were out of power. As a result, the Saindak project resumed production operations as usual even in the most severe days.
While the company was making efforts in maintaining production with the storm going on, they gave their hands to the local residents who also suffered a lot in the disaster. Huge supports were granted and donations given to help them out of the hardships and return to their normal life.