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The Environmental Management Agency last week lifted a ban on Belmont Leather paving way for the resumption of operations

Charity Ruzvidzo Business Reporter
THE Environmental Management Agency last week lifted a ban on Belmont Leather paving way for the resumption of operations at the Bulawayo-based tannery.Belmont is among 31 companies that were ordered to stop operations over failure to put in place adequate measures to reduce the amount of pollutants they were releasing into water sources.

The company’s head of operations, Amutjilani Gula Ndebele, told Business Chronicle that operations had resumed                after they implemented corrective  measures.

“In a bid to get back on our feet the company ceased all operations and embarked on a clean-up exercise to allow room for treatment and testing of the effluent,” he said.

“We moved all the sludge to disused production processing tanks, sedimentation and subsequent dehydrating and  drying.”

Ndebele said they were allowed to resume operations on Thursday last week a month after ceasing operations.

The order to shutdown companies came about as disaster was looming along Umguza River and its tributaries because of unprocessed waste disposal.

Ndebele said with the economic hardships facing the country, resumption of production will ensure that there were no job losses.

“Our employees are also grateful to EMA for allowing us to resume operations. Their jobs are now secured,” he said.

The leather firm also commended EMA’s efforts to give quick responses after complaints were raised with the authority for delaying to give responses.

“EMA has improved in its ways of operations, they have since reviewed our action plans and corrective measures in time,” he said.

A fortnight ago, the company’s judicial manager, Tawanda Mudarikwa, said Belmont had been shut down on the basis that it was polluting water by disposing suspended solid and chromium content within the discharged water.

“We were in the wrong. For us the case was discharging suspended solid and chromium content within the water, thus we have begun to engage the corrective measures to get back on our feet,” he said then.