WHILE East Ayrshire and the Scottish Coal Company Ltd take great credit for the opencast and railhead-related jobs in New Cumnock, who is to take responsibility for the 52% unemployment rate, the demolition of 100 council houses, and the depopulation crisis affecting the local and wider community?

Three important factors shroud Ayrshire's coalfield. First is East Ayrshire Council's claim to be involved in almost every local business venture in Cumnock and Doon Valley. Secondly, Scottish Coal and other mining groups own most of the surrounding lands. Thirdly, David Sneller is council leader and an employee of Scottish Coal and, regardless of what meetings he did or did not attend, the situation hardly provides the area with a sound base for innovative enterprise and investment.

This, possibly, answers the question of why favourable planning conditions prevail in the Cumnock area and why East Ayrshire Council can back any coal project in principle.

To move beyond the local authority, the Scottish Office received over 200 responses by October 1997 to its consultation document, ''Opencast Coal - Review of Planning Policy in Scotland''. Based on the Government's 10-point plan, the Environment Minister promised a radical review of the opencast industry with an announcement due in March this year.

The Scottish Office refused to comment as the date of announcement loomed and passed and then the Environment Minister, Malcolm Chisholm, resigned. The opencast issue is now to be included in the Government's overall Energy Policy, not due until December, leaving the opencast question hanging noxiously in the air and giving the worrying impression that the Scottish Office, too, has little control over this industry.

The whole of Ayrshire is actively involved in the coal industry of today. For example, Hunterston in north Ayrshire is importing coal from Colombia, South Africa, and Australia, hauling it to Ayr Harbour in south Ayrshire (possibly via a screening plant in East Ayrshire), and its destination is Northern Ireland. Meanwhile, EWS Railways are planning to transport 4 million tonnes of Scottish opencast coal to power stations in England this year. The south of the county, of course, will soon have its pylons.

As the fuel conglomerates encroach on Ayrshire, spare a thought for the folk living on the coalfield. Muirkirk has three active sites and a further two are starting this year. Last week, the housing scheme there was showered by debris from a ''controlled'' explosion at a nearby opencast.

In New Cumnock at the Leggate, residents are suffering up to one lorry per minute pounding past their houses.

For the next 11 years, the people of Dalmellington will be denied access to a moorland area the size of Kilmarnock as the giant Pennyvenie opencast begins.

The tiny community of Skares will soon have a sixth opencast in the vicinity.

Mary Ann Gordon,

8 Hillside Crescent,

Auchinleck.

May 25.

IN a letter published in The Herald from Councillor Jim O'Neill (March 26), Secretary of the ruling East Ayrshire Council Labour Group, I was accused of being ''cowardly'', of carrying out a ''deliberately insulting attack on East Ayrshire Labour Councillors and their families'', of seeking to ''smear my colleagues and their families'' and of making a ''snide and unsubstantiated suggestion''.

Ouch! This venting by Councillor O'Neill was his response to my letter that you published (March 23) which suggested that perhaps it was because East Ayrshire Labour councillors and their families had vested interests in the coal industry, that planning permission for opencast coal mines was so easily obtained in East Ayrshire. He also stated, a little dramatically I thought, ''If he has evidence of this, I challenge him to publish the evidence, and to accept the consequences''.

Just over a week ago you published my letter (May 16) in which I presented evidence that the leader of East Ayrshire Labour Group and consultant to the coal industry, Councillor David Sneller, had not been entirely accurate in his letter on the subject (April 1) when he stated that he always left planning meetings involving opencast mining. His attendance is recorded in the minutes of several council planning committees where decisions on opencast mines were made. In addition, a coal industry publication itself cited a ''favourable planning climate'' in East Ayrshire, predicting that the area surrounding Cumnock will become the ''engine house'' of the opencast industry in Britain.

I have kept to my part of Councillor O'Neill's challenge and I expect him to keep to his part. What are to be the consequences that he darkly alluded to? So far not a peep. Surely the East Ayrshire Labour Group are not digging rather large holes in which to bury their heads, and hope that this matter will go away? Many Ayrshire people await their considered response.

Further possible evidence of Labour councillors' interests in the lucrative opencast industry relate to the Cumnock and Doon Municipal Bank. I understand that its only customer is the Cumnock and Doon Valley Minerals Trust, which was set up to administer the funds ''donated'' to it by the coal industry (as a condition of planning consent) for the benefit of the unfortunate people who live in areas afflicted by opencast mining.

Many questions surround this evasive financial institution, not least of which are: Is it true that the board of directors of the bank or the trustees have, or have had, East Ayrshire Labour councillors as their members? Has the bank or trust made a loan of tens of thousands of pounds to East Ayrshire Council and was this loan offered on very favourable terms? Finally, have any past or present Labour councillors, or their immediate families or businesses, ever received a loan from either the trust or the bank?

Call me suspicious, but finding out anything about the relationship between bank, trust, East Ayrshire Council, and its Labour Group is proving to be a bit of a problem.

Dr. Brian McNeil.

23 Main Street, Dunlop,

Ayrshire.

May 27.