The Premier Humanitarian Mine/UXO Clearance NGO in Afghanistan

 

FUNDED

On September 1, 1990 ATC deployed 2 Mechanical Flail machines in the Urgoon district of Paktika Province and continued to use them to work in different parts of the country until early 1996. ATC ceased using the machines in 1996 following an evaluation, carried out in late 1995, which showed that they were not proving cost effective.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

B.             A Mechanical Excavation Team (MET) commenced operations on 20 May 1997 in residential areas of Kabul City. The team used a Backhoe machine to excavate soil from mined residential areas and canals, which was proving to be an extremely slow and high-risk activity for manual deminers.  This method of demining has proved to be very effective and two more excavators were introduced by an EU funded project to ATC in early 1998.

C.             Another machine, contributed by the Japanese Government, commenced evaluation trials in Afghanistan in late July till the end of the year 2000. This Hitachi machine is more flexible in the tasks it can perform, having a longer reach and being equipped with rotary cutter and chain (in addition to the standard excavating bucket) which can be used to clear bushes, dense vegetation, and the more problematical mine fields.

The rotary cutter consists of a heavily armored rotating steel drum with hardened steel teeth designed to chew up the ground and any buried mines to a depth of 300 mm (further passes on the same spot can increase the clearance depth to 600 mm, 900 mm or deeper as required)