‘Urgently capacitate small scale miners to deal with emergencies’

THE Mine Rescue Association of Zimbabwe should urgently capacitate small scale miners to enable them to deal with emergencies that may arise during the course of their operations.

Chief Government mining engineer Tapererwa Paskwakaviri said this during a Chamber of Mines proto-competition for underground mines held at Unki Mine last week.

“The Government is on a drive to promote mining in the small and medium enterprises (SME’s) sector or small scale mining sector where the demand for rescue services is existent,” he said.

“With the new players now in the field, I urge the Mine Rescue Association to respond to the changes and assist the small scale miners to capacitate themselves to deal with emergencies.”

He commended the recent introduction of fresh air mine teams who held their national competitions in Hwange last week.

“Mine rescue is important as it saves lives and company property and it is very important and crucial when we look at this category of miners in our country,” said Eng Paskwakaviri.

How Mine came out tops during the competitions on Friday after garnering 1 083 points with Zimplats coming second at 1 058 points. In third position was Mimosa Mine with 1 048 points.

The president of the Mine Resources Association of Zimbabwe Mrs Betty Dube said: “It is highly commendable that mining companies in Zimbabwe now have rescue teams as part of their emergency preparedness and response programmes and proto-teams like these ones we witnessed here today provide rescue teams with a perfect opportunity to test their levels of readiness and rescue skills in case of an underground emergency.”

Other competitors were Redwing Mine, which settled for fourth position, Unki (fifth), Freda Rebecca (sixth), Unki 2 (seventh) and Renco Mine (eighth).

Redwing Mine’s captain was voted the best during the competitions.