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Michael Magoronga, Midlands Correspondent

SMALL scale miners’ umbrella body, the Zimbabwe Miners’ Federation (ZMF), says its members are committed to working hard this year to ensure the country meets the 40-tonne gold target.

Gold deliveries to Fidelity Printers and Refiners (FPR) for the period January to 31 December 2019 were 27.66 tonnes, a decline of 17 percent from 33.29 tonnes recorded during the same period in 2018. The national gold target for 2019 was 35 tonnes. 

Government set the ambitious 40-tonne gold output for the year 2020 after output dropped last year due to a number of factors ranging from lack of proper coordination and incapacitation by artisanal miners to arrests of small-scale miners by law enforcement agencies.

ZMF spokesperson, Mr Dosman Mangisi, said small scale miners were determined to increase output and official deliveries.

“We are doing everything in our capacity to ensure that the small-scale miners are capacitated so as to maximize production. We are hopeful that this year we will hit the mark, as you are aware that our sector is the major contributor to the gold output,” he said.

As part of efforts to achieve the 40-tonne gold target, ZMF has partnered with the Zimbabwe School of Mines (ZSM) to create a formidable alliance towards improved operations. 

“We are trying to leverage and capacitate our miners with technical expertise. Just last week we held a workshop for the small and medium small-scale miners in conjunction with the ZSM in the southern region,” said Mr Mangisi. 

“We are saying these small-scale miners should grow to become medium scale and grow to large scale miners. But the arrangement during the workshop was that students from the college can go for attachment to these medium scale miners and by so doing both the college and the company benefits.”

He said the alliance would go a long way in improving extraction methods as well as promoting safer modes of gold extraction in the mines as the students would bring a wealth of knowledge.

“Also, we agreed that during the student’s assessment, the lecturers can give free consultations to the mines, further enriching the mine operations,” said Mr Mangisi.

He also said ZMF was in total support of arrests of criminals within the mining sector.

“Of course, we are in support of the arrests made by the police recently.  All those arrested are criminals who are bent on causing havoc and distorting the mining sector. We are in support of the arrests as they will bring sanity in the mining sector,” said Mr Mangisi.

He said miners affiliated to ZMF were well documented and were easily identifiable as they have created templates that safeguard their members. Small scale miners contribute about 60 percent of the national gold output.