Miners blame woes on ousted Machaya

Miners blame woes on ousted Machaya
Published: 05 December 2017
CHROME miners yesterday told Parliament that former Midlands Provincial Affairs minister Jason Machaya interfered a lot in the issuance of chrome claims and promoted corruption and turf wars over ownership of close to 305 chrome claims in the province.

Zimbabwe Miners' Federation regional representative for Midlands region, Anthony Msipa, raised the allegations when he appeared before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Mines, where he, together with Zimbabwe Miners' Federation president Apolonia Munzverengwi, told MPs that government bought 305 chrome claims in July this year from ZimAlloys and Zimasco, but no due diligence checks were made to see if the ground they bought had chrome deposits.

"We lobbied government to withdraw 50% chrome claims from Zimasco and Zim Alloys for redistribution, but distribution of the claims went on well in other provinces except Midlands where there is still a lot of uncertainty and the redistribution exercised was hijacked," Msipa said.

"Instead of the Ministry of Mines being at the forefront in terms of redistribution of the claims, the resident minister (Machaya) was put in charge and he told us that he had his own priorities and we ended up having multiple allocations of claims," he said.

The committee was also told that most of the claims distributed by Machaya ended up in the hands of foreigners like the Chinese.

Msipa said chrome miners had envisaged that priority would be given to the already sitting chrome miners who had developed their claims, but they were shocked to see people coming to take over waving letters from Machaya.

"We approached former Mines minister Walter Chidhakwa and his deputy Fred Moyo, but we got no joy. The Midlands provincial mining director is also very arrogant," he said.

Msipa said government had also been failing to support chrome miners to buy small smelters for value addition, adding after government ceded the claims by Zim Alloys and Zimasco, the two companies were no longer interested in smelting for small-scale chrome miners.

He said small-scale chrome miners had contributed over $270 million in foreign currency to the national fiscus yet they were not getting the 5% export incentive from government.

"We have over 600 tributors (miners), and each miner employs about 40 workers. We made representation to the minister (Mines) and we occupied 205 blocks, but the minister said we must not be greedy and should reduce them, and we were given 93 blocks, but still confusion came with the inclusion of the resident minister (Machaya)," he said, adding that one block was about 25 hectares.

Mudzverengwi said the other problem experienced by small-scale miners was pricing of chrome where middlemen come buying from them at low prices of $25 to $35 per tonne, while Apple Bridge, a local company with the responsibility to take care of chrome miners, was buying their chrome at $80.

She said Zimasco, ZimAlloys and Chinese miners were also buying chrome from small-scale miners at a low price of between $30 and $40 per tonne.
- newsday
Tags: Machaya, Chrome,

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