DAK LAK — Central Highland provinces' local authorities appear to be having difficulty controlling the illegal exploitation of semiprecious stones which has been going on for years.

The gems include amethyst, rose quartz, smoke quartz, agate and chalcedony, in small and medium mines on Chu Yang Sin mountain in Dak Lak Province and opals in Dak Nong Province's Dak Min District.

The rising prices of the stones made the miners determined, Dak Gan Commune People's Committee chairman Nguyen Van Tuan said. At present, it was worth about VND50 million (US$2,400) per tonne of quartz, he said.

Controlling the situation was very complicated.

"We have failed to catch illegal diggers red-handed because they always seem to know when we are going to conduct inspections and they disappear," he said.

Tuan said the miners, who came from other areas, had enticed local residents to sell their cultivation land where it was believed opals existed.

Then they brought in machines to illegally mine the opals, he said.

Reports by the Vietnam News Agency said many local residents, including students, had cut down trees and destroyed their mountain fields in an attempt to get the semiprecious stones as the prices increased.

The agency reported that two men from one commune had died after being buried alive in a local mine collapse in March.

Organisations and individuals wanting to mine for gemstones must, by law, have a licence from the Government and none had been issued in Dak Nong Province, the agency reported.

Meanwhile, more than a dozen telephone calls from a Viet Nam News reporter to the provinces' departments of Natural Resources and Environment went unanswered. — VNS