The “Mongolian Underground Mine Museum, Training, Research and Tourism Centre”, built around the Berkh underground mine, opened today. The opening was attended by Prime Minister L. Oyun-Erdene; Ts. Tuvaan, Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources; G. Erdenetuya, Executive Director of the Mongolian National Mining Association; G. Yondon, Director General of Erdenet Mining Corporation; the Mineral Resources and Petroleum Authority; Members of Parliament elected from the eastern region; and representatives of the mining industry and the local community. The Berkh mine has a 70-year history.
Minister Ts. Tuvaan highlighted the centre’s importance: it brings a closed mine — a model of mine closure and rehabilitation — back into the economy, creates jobs for the residents of the mining town, raises the social responsibility of mining companies, preserves understanding of a sector of major importance to Mongolia’s economy together with the miner’s profession and heritage and passes them on to the young, serves as a training and research base for students and researchers in the field, and creates a tourism product.
At a depth of 45 metres the museum houses a section on the history of mine transport, miners’ rest quarters, a training hall, halls on the history of Mongolian industry and the origins of mining and on the history of the Berkh mine, halls named for Erdenet Mining Corporation, Mongolrostsvetmet and the Oyu Tolgoi mine, a miners’ café, a meeting room, a reception hall, a VR games room, a fear room and a waterfall. The project’s feasibility study was approved in 2020, when construction began.
By way of background, a working group was set up in 2018 by order A/221 of the then Minister of Mining and Heavy Industry to study using the Berkh mine in Khentii province as a museum in connection with its closure and to propose next steps. It concluded that an underground mine museum, training, research and tourism centre could be established around the mine’s “mountain workshop”; in 2019 the project team studied experience in South Korea and Germany and carried out the major studies for the project.
Source: mining.mn