MUTARE– Villagers in Chiadzwa have appealed to government to halt operations of a Chinese firm which is mining diamonds in Marange without conducting an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).
In a joint media statement issued by the Centre for Research and Development and three other community based organisations, Chiadzwa villagers said they do not trust the mining firm to mine responsibly as it has unaddressed legacy issues.
The CBOs Amalgamated Chiadzwa Development Community Trust, Marange Development Trust Bocha Development Community Trust, monitor cultural, environment and human rights in Marange.
James Mupfumi director of CRD said as a human rights watchdog working with the community to defend economic, cultural and environment rights of the people they are tracking developments during the coronavirus lockdown.
He said with government concern Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Company (ZCDC) now signing JV agreements there could be ‘emergence of kleptocracy because of too much government interference.’
“We want to update the nation on what is happening in resource rich communities where mining extraction is taking place.
“Corona has the potential to worsen the situation in communities that are already vulnerable from mining activities, it has the capacity to mask opacity in the mining sector because they are playing going on in the sector outside the public glare.
“Our fears are that ZCDC is now playing the role of government which was masking a lot of corruption that led to a lot of revenue losses in the previous regime, with this pandemic there can be continuation of these issues while the world is focusing on the pandemic,” he said.
He added, “Transparency and accountability are at risk because there is no policy framework guiding operations in the diamond sector yet ZCDC is already signing Joint Venture with partners who are coming in without a clear guideline.”
Jey Kasakara chairman of ACDCT said they have made efforts to engage with Anjin over legacy issues, including destroyed community infrastructure and rehabilitation of their former mining concessions.
He said the community want government to intervene and stop operations of the miner until it has addressed these legacy issues including destruction of community livelihoods and the destruction of their environment.
“Since the coming back of Anjin we conducted policy consultative meeting on human rights and looking at policies in the country, people are demanding that the company addresses legacy issues, rehabilitation of their mining concessions, they destroyed four wells where we fetched water.
“We were given a mandate from the people to go and represent them in facilitating dialogue with company before it commenced its operations, Anjin promised to attend but they then later reneged from this promise, instead they requested that we submit our concerns.
“As a community were hoping that the mining companies will only come back when the law governing the mining sector has been finalized especially the Mines and Mineral Bill which we believe if the law was there it would protect us.
“We have our own recommendations that we submitted to government in the process of the making of the law and we had hoped that government should have by now come through with a new law, without this law they should stop mining,” said Kasakara.
