Vizianagaram | Sept 26, 2016: The poor and backward Vizianagaram district is now likely to get the label of mineral hub. At present, the coastal district has huge amount of manganese deposits in Garividi, Cheepurupalli, Gurla mandals. Now, the mines and geology department has found large quantity of iron deposits in Salur agency.

They have found the high quality of iron deposits in survey number five of Roddam village and in survey number 254 of Padmapuram in Pachipenta mandal, which is adjacent to Odisha border. Actually, some of the applicants have appealed the government to give permissions to extract manganese from those hills. Later, the mines and geology staff has identified that there is iron ore in 1,300 acres of lands.

The value of ore deposits will be around Rs 3,000 crore. Assistant Director of Mines and Geology Sairam Singh said, “We have forwarded the information to the national geological survey to confirm this and to give further instructions to extract the ore. We have tested the samples in labs and found that the ore has 90 percent worthy and it is useful to produce iron.

As per primary survey, we found those mine in the radius of one kilometer. But if we conduct extensive survey, we can get the correct figures in this aspect. The ore we found is on a hill, which is 650 meters high. We are estimating that mines may spread in Odisha too.

This will be the first iron mine in entire Eastern Ghats. The iron mines are near by the Sunki Ghat, which is on the way to reach Malkangiri, Sunabed in Odisha.

At present, the government has identified that Eastern Ghats are rich with bauxite mineral, which is a raw material to produce aluminum,” he said.

(Source: http://www.thehansindia.com)