Burkina Faso: emotion and anger in the village of missing miners of Perkoa
View of one of the galleries of the Perkoa zinc mine, in Burkina Faso, during a rescue operation to find eight miners still stranded, May 13, 2022. REUTERS - ANNE MIMAULT
Text by: RFI Follow
2 mins
Search operations for the eight missing miners are continuing in the Perkoa mine.
For the families, without news for a month, the main thing is to find them, whatever their condition.
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With our special correspondent in Réo,
Yaya Boudani
Within the family of Jean Bationo, one of the miners stuck in the Perkoa mine, some try to fill their day with housework.
Melaine Bazié, she is lost in thought.
Eight months pregnant, Jean's companion was hoping for good news after the opening of a refuge room in the Perkoa mine on Tuesday, May 17.
But the place was empty
by the time rescuers arrived.
A day later, Melaine Bazié blames the blow: “
We are discouraged, because our hope was on this room.
He was the one who took care of the whole family, his mother, his big brother...
"
Aimé Fulgence Bakyono had however reassured his wife Aïcha Kinda on the security measures in the event of an incident within the galleries.
But more than a month after the flood, the miner remains untraceable for the moment too.
“
He told me that in case of danger, there are places to take refuge.
I shouldn't have worried.
Now,
we don't know if they are alive
, or if we can find their bodies if they are dead...
", laments Aïcha Kinda.
Sitting at the back of a room, Joseph Bakouala, the uncle of Aimé Fulgence Bakyono, and Melaine Bazié ruminate their anger against those in charge of the mine, whom they accuse of not having made the necessary effort from the first hours of the flood last April 16.
“
At first, they didn't take the (rescue, editor's note) work seriously.
It was when the government dispatched the ministers that the work began to move
”, plagues Joseph Bakouala.
The director of the mine ensures that the search operations are carried out with the same commitments and efforts to find their eight colleagues.
Location of the Perkoa mine, in Burkina Faso.
© RFI
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Burkina Faso