Stakeholders welcome temporary mining ban

MINING stakeholders have welcomed the Government’s decision to temporarily stop artisanal mining during the rainy season as there is a high risk of shafts and tunnels flooding or collapsing.

The temporary ban was announced by the Minister of Mines and Mining Development Zhemu Soda at a media conference in Harare on Monday where he also announced mining precautions to be taken during the rainy season.

In an interview with The Herald yesterday, the Zimbabwe Diamond and Allied Minerals Workers Union (ZDAMWU) secretary-general, Mr Justice Chinhema said as a union they are happy with the position that was taken by the Ministry and Government at large to temporarily stop the operation of artisanal miners due to rain.

“We support this position as it is an issue we have been communicating with artisanal miners about accidents happening during the rainy season and we have many lives which were lost because of shaft mines collapsing.

“We look forward to artisanal miners understanding that it is not about money, but saving lives,” said Mr Chinhema.

Zimbabwe Miners Federation president Henrietta Rushwaya added her voice saying they were happy that it was not a complete ban, but a temporary move to ensure lives were preserved.

“Despite what the minister and his team will do to ensure artisanal miners adhere to these temporary precautionary measures, I will encourage artisanal miners not to mine in sandy areas and muddy areas.

“Also I would like to implore that we must start implementing sustainable mining in order to save both the environment and lives,” she said.

The Chamber of Mines of Zimbabwe Safety Health and Environment Chairperson Dr Alfred Chinyere said artisanal miners did not do proper mine planning, excavations and ground monitoring hence the decision to suspend operations was key.

“I find the decision which was made by the Minister to be proactive and considerate.

It is on the back of the fact that in small scale mining, unlike us in big mines where there is proper mine planning, there is ground monitoring which is also done and sadly when we receive heavy rains there is a lot of ground instability which happens and people tend to get trapped.

“Even in our statistics as Chamber of Mines most of the fatalities come because of the ground collapse especially this season because the ground would be very saturated and it tends to slide and these collapses end up trapping most miners who will be working underground,” said Dr Chinyere.

Dr Chinyere added that there was a need for the Government to take this time of break to organise artisanal miners’ operations and their working places to ensure zero harm in mining.

“It is an issue where as a country we need to work on artisanal miners coming in to also formalize their processes so that there are basic standards of mines that can be followed which protect the mine’s structures in terms of its excavation and support structures so that they do not just collapse on people.

“So this issue is a call and we also want the government to come in and support the artisanal miners in providing frameworks for training and mobilization so that they are formally registered so that activities are done in a safe manner,” said Dr Chinyere.

Meanwhile, Zimbabwe Artisanal Miners Association president Ms Constance Muchoni expressed mixed feelings over the temporary ban saying it is good in the sense that they are considering the safety of the artisanal miners but at the same time just stopping people from working also means they are affecting their source of livelihood.

“We have almost around 600 000 artisanal miners in Zimbabwe and just say each artisanal miner supports about three people that is about 1,8 million people in total whose source of livelihood would have been affected by the temporal ban.”

She added that the temporary ban will affect the gold output.

“This ban now considers that smallscale and artisanal miners contribute more than 60% of gold output and this ban will affect the overall output of the nation in the long run.

“So I think that relevant authorities need to look at that as well.

“We hope that the temporal ban will not be for a long time, a month thirty days is a long time and two months it will be a disaster, you will find that most of our people the rogue ones will start looking into new avenues like stealing because their source of life would have been cut just like that,” said Ms Muchoni.

She concluded by urging the Government to continuously educate small scale and artisanal miners best practices.