Miners’ federation to set up gold service centres
THE Zimbabwe Miners’ Federation (ZMF) will soon set up gold service centres in seven provinces as part of efforts to boost output.
ZMF will partner the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe and the Zimbabwe School of Mines as well as local mining engineering firm, Yagden Engineering, to come up with a special purpose vehicle to run the service centres.
The service centres will be located in Shurugwi (Midlands), Vhovha and Inyathi (Matabeleland South) and Odzi (Manicaland).
The other centres will be Banket (Mashonaland West), Mt Darwin (Mashonaland Central) and Makaha in Mashonaland East.
ZMF chief executive officer, Mr Wellington Takavarasha said under the partnership, Yagden would provide mining equipment for use by smallscale miners while the Central Bank through Fidelity Printers and Refiners will finance the exercise in a move meant to unlock value and potential of smallscale miners.
The Zimbabwe School of Mines will provide the technical expertise, he said.
“We’ve already identified the areas and we’re still working on the modalities so that we roll out the exercise in the seven provinces.
“We hope to be moving by the end of the year. We’re partnering the RBZ and Yagden Engineering so that small-scale miners have equipment to boost production,” he said.
Statistics released by Fidelity Printers and Refiners show that small-scale players produced 3,9 tonnes of gold in the first half of this year.
Last year small-scale miners contributed 7, 3 tonnes of the more than 17 tonnes of gold produced by the country.
Gold output this year is expected to shoot up to 24 tonnes buoyed mainly by expected increase from small-scale miners.
Small-scale miners will soon take delivery of $5 million worth of mining equipment from China. — @lavuzigara1