VILLAGERS in Gwanda, Matabeleland South province, have flagged the activities of rogue artisanal miners wreaking havoc in their communities after they invaded a field at a children’s home.
The gold miners have also been accused of destroying homesteads and fields.
In an interview, Gwanda North legislator Desire Nkala said the communities in the constituency were facing challenges with miners from other regions swooping on their resources.
“We are having a serious challenge as rogue miners have a tendency of mining inside people’s homes and fields making our livelihoods hard. They have even dug within our foster children's home Kip Keino in the presence of policemen,” he said.
Nkala said the destruction of people’s property exposed police's failure to deal with illegal mining in the country.
“The illegal miners mostly are from other regions and they always use dangerous weapons like machetes to fight members of our community for spaces leaving people injured while some have reportedly been killed in the fights,” he said.
Nkala said they had approached officials from the Mines and Mining Development ministry although their efforts were in vain.
“This challenge is also exacerbated by lack of formal employment opportunities in the country and this has forced our children to resort to illegal mining that is currently the only opportunity for them,” he said.
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Nkala said they had lost livestock due to open pits left by illegal miners and as result they were being deprived of draught power, worsening poverty in the area.
“The illegal mining activities have led to destruction of our dams and rivers due to siltation leading us to harvest little water making the development of our area difficult,” he said.
Nkala said it was unfortunate that government had failed to protect citizens from illegal mining which was stalling development in the country.
“It is very sad as we have lost some members of community as the government fails to protect the citizens and some are employed by organisation and are given very little salaries and exposed to harsh conditions at work,” he said.
Matabeland South deputy provincial mines director Chancellor Chidziva said the department had not received reports concerning illegal mining activities.
“We have not received such reports but we will look into and address it correctly through the ministry,” Chidziva said.
Matabeland South provincial manager for the Environmental Management Agency Decent Ndlovu said police was stationed within the Kip Keino foster home for the protection of the area.
“However, at the moment I heard that they had left the area and we are yet to find information on the reason why they left the area," he said.
Ndlovu said they had not received any information concerning the illegal mining activities within the foster children's home.
