DINAJPUR, April 10, 2024 (BSS)- After two months of closure, stone extraction operations have started again from the country's only underground Madhyapara hard rock mine at Parbatipur upazila of the district.

General Manager (PEP&M) of Madhyapara Granite Mining Company Limited, Abu Taleb Faraji, confirmed this information to journalists this afternoon.

He said at present about 8.5 million tonnes of stone are stored in the mine yard. More than two lakh tonnes of stone has been sold in the last two months while stone extraction from the mine has stopped.

Partial production started from 10:30 pm on Tuesday, but full-scale stone extraction from the mine has started today on Wednesday from 12noon. It is expected that it will be possible to extract more than 5000tonnes of stone per day, Abu Taleb Faraji said.

According to sources, despite the increase in production every month, due to the lack of speed in the sale of stones, a huge stock of about 1 million tonnes of stones of various sizes has been built up in the mining yard. Citing the reason of the limitation of stone storage space, the mining manufacturing contractor company GTC announced to stop stone extraction from last February 1.

The Germania-Test Consortium (GTC) is carrying out the extraction of stone from the mine.