Following the recent death of over 20 miners who were trapped in a Kadoma mine, a local academic institution, Chinhoyi University of Technology (CUT) has since started the process of opening a Mining Faculty in Kadoma that is expected to offer training to artisanal miners in a move expected to assist in reducing mining disasters.
Addressing stakeholders at the Kadoma Economic Development Monetary Policy breakfast meeting yesterday, CUT pro-vice Chancellor (Business Development and Resource Mobilisation) Professor Zororo Muranda said that opening of a mining campus in Kadoma was strategic.
“As a University we happen to be collaborating with the council (Kadoma) here, they have given us land for putting up the faculty. There is an issue of miners dying while searching for gold at Battlefields and Eldorado,” he said.
“We want to put a proposal to Fidelity Refinery and Printers as the biggest beneficiary of the gold coming from artisanal miners to cooperate with us and the mining sector in training of artisanal miners,” added Muranda.
In a speech read on her behalf by the director in her office Douglas Chiwiro, Mashonaland West Minister of State Mary Mliswa-Chikoka, said the province had more to learn from Kadoma Economic Development Forum.
“We applaud you for holding such an important meeting in our province. It dovetails with what the province is planning in a few days to come, we would be holding a Mashonaland West Business Indaba in Chinhoyi,” Chiwiro said.
A police representative at the meeting, Inspector Clemence Mabgweazara said the continued loss of lives was worrying urging government to regularize the operations of small scale miners.
“Most of the young men in this province do not know the skills and dangers of mining, they lack knowledge. They put their life on the line all the time in search of gold.
“As police we are concerned with these deaths as they could have been avoided. Our plea to artisanal miners is for them to regularize their operations and practice mining legally whilst wearing safety clothing. Saving life is what matters most at the end of the day,” said Inspector Mabgweazara.
Since the beginning of the year, around 10 cases were reported with seven of them from Kadoma, not forgetting the recent Kadoma mine tragedy that claimed 25 lives was declared a National disaster by President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
