Online Reporter
Judith Phiri Zimpapers Business Hub
THE Zimbabwe Safety Health and Environmental Council (Zimshec) has said the development of the Responsible Mining Toolkit is at an advanced stage, targeting the prevention of mine disasters in the mining sector.
The initiative complements the Government’s Responsible Mining Audit, a comprehensive assessment of mining operations to ensure they comply with environmental, safety, labour and other relevant regulations, while also ensuring that they are conducted in a socially and environmentally responsible manner.
In an interview, Zimshec executive director, Mr Philemon Mokuele said various consultations have been done.
“We did consultation for the toolkit in Mberegwa and Gwanda where we invited representatives from mines, especially people in the managerial positions so that we train and consult on the challenges they face in their mining activities,” he said.
“This was to ensure that we develop the toolkit from the information gathered. Various stakeholders were also in attendance such as representatives from the Ministry of Mines and Mining Development, Environmental
Management Agency (EMA), local authorities and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) among others.”
He said the toolkit was a guideline for responsible mining in the small scale and artisanal miners sector, while it also call for formalisation of the informal sector that does unsafe operations and unregulated mining.
Mr Mokuele said unregulated mining affected the health of miners and caused various diseases such as tuberculosis (TB), silicosis and noise-induced hearing loss among others.
He added: “This is where most of the environmental degradation is done due to poor mining practices. On the legal part, the compliance in the mining sector is a bit low which is also affecting formalisation. The toolkit highlights all these challenges and provides solutions for them. It will help miners by providing clear guidelines of the requirements of statutory standards of best mining and enhancing the environmental stability by promoting responsible mining.”
Mr Mokuele said with the toolkit at an advanced stage, they were currently doing validation and will hold workshops where they will train the miners on how to use it.
He said they would also do the monitoring of the adoption to find out how the miners were implementing the things they would have learnt during the workshop.
