ATHENS: The public order minister Nikos Dendias said that Hellas Gold plans to invest €1.3-billion ($1.73-billion) in the area over all, and extract 9.6 million ounces of gold. Its operations, it says, have been repeatedly vetted and cleared by the authorities.
But the Eldorado Gold, battling to develop a mine in Greece in the face of government opposition, said it was blocked from completing construction of a processing plant at the site. Amber Kanwar reports.
The mine employees, who plan to protest in Athens on April 16, counter that it is they who have faced intimidation and violence from the environmentalist faction since the project was first announced in 2011. In the beach resort town of Ierissos, where most residents oppose the project, families of miners live in a “climate of terror,” their union representative Christos Zafeiroudas said. “What is dangerous is that this hatred has even passed to the children in the local schools.
The company may leave one day, but we still live here,” he told AFP. In 2012, dozens of miners trashed an observation post manned by anti-mine activists in the mountain of Skouries, near a planned expansion site of the mine project.
