The Sunday News
Dosman Mangisi, Mining Correspondent
MINES and Mining Development Minister Walter Chidhakwa says his ministry will next year decentralise its offices to district levels in a bid to promote efficiency and growth of the country’s mining sector through ensuring that miners are effectively capacitated with the requisite knowledge in mineral extraction.
Minister Chidhakwa said the ministry had successfully set up its provincial offices and plans are underway to cascade to the district levels to ensure that miners’ needs are efficiently attended to.
He said at a signing ceremony of the $12 million ferrochrome deal between Zimasco and a South African mining and industry firm, Portnex International last week.
“We hope now we will be able to cascade to districts after successfully setting up provincial offices as we build up our resources. We want every district to have a mining engineer, geologist, metallurgist and surveyors so that we get closer and much closer to the miners, our clients,” Minister Chidhakwa said.
He said provincial mining directors should be abreast of mining activities taking place in their areas of jurisdiction.
“You (provincial mining directors) must know what is happening around mining districts foremost, to know how many artisanal miners are there; small-scale miners, big miners and primary producers of minerals resources who are in districts. It is your responsibility to know them and you can only know how to assist them when you visit them. You have the power invested in you by the law,” said Minister Chidhakwa.
He said all Ministry officials are expected to fully utilise their expertise to grow the mining sector as its recovery was critical to the sustainable long-term recovery of the country’s economy.
“We have 96 geologists and I expect to hear discoveries, metallurgist, I want to hear miners saying we are being helped to test our mineral ore samples, engineers conducting trainings to small-scale miners. We have the facilities to assist miners.
“I want all the disorder in the small-scale and artisanal mining sector to be corrected with you being on the ground assisting them. This will be achieved at district level because we will be closer to our miners,” Minister Chidhakwa said.
He said there was need for the Ministry to capacitate small-scale and artisanal miners so as to ensure that extracted minerals are channelled in a formal way at a time metal commodities prices are volatile.
“You (Ministry officials) need to assist them to capacitate their operations especially in times like these when metal commodities prices are low so that they raise their volumes,” Minister Chidhakwa said.
There are eight mining provinces in the country with Harare and Bulawayo being administrative.
