Online Reporter
Illegal gold miners are literally digging up Bulawayo.
They are in Killarney, Queenspark, Mahatshula, Mqabuko Heights and other suburbs; all chaotic. Their activities are causing serious environmental, social, physical and security challenges.
As we report elsewhere today, Bulawayo City Council is in a quandary over the illegal activities at its gravel pit in Khumalo suburb.
It does not know whether to shut it down, as a way to stop gold panning or continue extracting gravel from there and with that, continuing incursions by the panners.
Decommissioning it, as the latest full council minutes show, means the local authority spending as much as $4 million and possibly creating a new challenge — a shortage of gravel, an indispensable building material in a city where construction activity is expanding.
“The Khumalo pit is the primary source of gravel for civil works, specifically for supplying decomposed gravel used in road construction, water and sewer bedding, and backfill materials in the eastern suburbs and central business district areas,” said the local authority.
“Decommissioning the pit would leave the Richmond and Pumula pits as the remaining sources of gravel and this change would significantly increase the gravel haul distance for works in the city centre and eastern suburbs.”
The cost implications of shutting down the pit and the likelihood of the city creating a gravel shortage, highlight that the only solution to the problem is for council to invest much more in securing it.
The National University of Science and Technology, just across the road from the Khumalo gravel pit, has succeeded in chasing the gold seekers away, after it engaged police to reinforce its internal security detail.
Just diagonally opposite the pit is Old Nic Mine, one of the country’s oldest gold workings.
We have not heard the mine speaking as helplessly as council is doing over the activities of panners.
A short run to the west of the pit is a place that is said to be highly prospective for the yellow metal and was invaded by panners at some point, but it is now very secure with no illegal activity reported.
Noting the foregoing three successes, not to mention the city’s natural obligation to law enforcement, we don’t see any reason, absolutely no reason, why the local authority can even consider capitulating to criminals by decommissioning the Khumalo gravel pit.
We are determined to resist the temptation to speculate that there might be a few, who are benefitting from the chaos.
Thus, council must just find a way to seal off that pit (it’s only one pit) from criminals in the same way that Nust and Old Nic Mine have done at their properties; no whining or throwing hands in the air.
Council complained in the minutes that they lack manpower but we don’t think police will refuse to collaborate at little to no extra cost to the local authority.
