Milestone deal for small-scale miners
A SOUTH AFRICAN company, Gold Genius has struck a milestone deal with the Zimbabwe Miners Federation which will see it injecting about $30 million in the setting-up of gold service centres for use by small-scale miners in various parts of the country.
Gold Genius chairman Mr Pierre Roux said his company which has been supplying mining equipment to the country over the last 10 years first brokered the deal with the Government to design and construct a state-of-the-art gold service centre of excellence but the agreement fell through due to lack of funding.
He said this after the signing of an MoU between his company and Bubi Small-Scale Miners Association (BSSMA), an affiliate of ZMF in Bubi District on Thursday.
“This deal is basically a combination of three years of going through the legalities to meet the requirements of the Zimbabwe Investment Authority. We are putting the first service centre here in Bubi where we are starting construction tomorrow (Friday) and we are going to build a further five which will be in Shangani, Matobo, Filabusi, Fort Rixon and Kwekwe.
“Each service centre will put us in the region of $1 million to put it up. The capital that we need to fund for purchasing machinery to be used there is a further $4 million per service centre. In capital terms that will put us at $30 million for the project. There would be five full time jobs created per service centre which add up to 30 jobs. It won’t be run by experts from South Africa but by locals,” said Mr Roux.
Apart from milling the gold ore brought by small-scale miners the service centres would have a buying office on site as well as provide compressors, explosives among other mining equipment.
ZMF first vice-president Mr Ishmael Kaguru said the gold service centre would play a pivotal role in improving gold production while ensuring that small-scale miners benefit the real value from their ore.
“The importance of this partnership is to groom our miners in the sense that we will be having some technical people who will be teaching them proper mining and safety issues. At the end of the day they are going to benefit from their sands unlike what is happening with other millers. They will be getting