SHILLONG: A renewed operation involving the Indian Navy, Indian Air Force (IAF) along with the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), Odisha Fire Service , Coal India Limited and Kirloskar Brothers Limited (KBL) to try and rescue at least 15 miners trapped inside a 370 feet deep rat-hole coal mine in the Khloo Ryngksan area at Lumthari village in East Jaintia Hills district of the state got underway on Sunday but none of the trapped labourers has been traced until now.One of the major challenges faced by the rescuers is the non-availability of a mine map, as the insides of a rat-hole mine has several lateral passages making it difficult to dive in and search.The miners had gone down into the pit on December 13 to dig for coal and have since not came out even as water from the nearby Lytein river and other nearby abandoned mines have been flooding it, posing grave challenges in the rescue operations.The IAF has been assisting in the ongoing operation by airlifting sophisticated diving equipment of the Navy, even as the NDRF is coordinating the rescue operations with the help of the NDMA.A team of rescuers with 10 high-powered Kirloskar pumps has also reached the spot from Bhubaneshwar, even as another eight high-powered pumps of the Coal India Ltd are expected to be pressed into service in a couple of days, North Eastern Coalfields general manager J Bora said.Ten high-powered pumps requisitioned by the Union ministry of home affairs along with divers of the Indian Navy from Visakhapatnam and 21 men from the Odisha Fire Services are carrying out rescue operations, but to no avail as of yet.Surveyors and technical experts of the Coal India Limited have also started surveying the area around the mine before pumping out water from the coal pit.The high-powered pumps were brought to assist the National Disaster Response Force personnel. NDRF assistant commandant, Santosh Kumar Singh briefed the team leader of the Indian Navy divers and chief fire officer of the Odisha Fire Services, about the rescue operation.The trapped miners, of whom three are natives of Meghalaya and the rest from Assam come from impoverished background and many like them, including youth from even Nepal are driven to digging coal in the privately owned rat-hole mines in the coal belts of Jaintia Hills in Meghalaya to earn a living by putting life on the edge inside these virtual death traps.

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