adminIt means gold panning becomes controlled, with everyone allowed to mine freely without having to be always on the run from the police. Organised and controlled gold panning will also help destroy price distortions and kill the black market and help us ascertain the amount of gold output we have at any given time, as all gold that is panned will be recorded officially.
Legalising gold panning should also result in an increase in gold output and deliveries to Fidelity, employment creation and a general improvement in the standard of living of the people in the small-scale mining sector. It will also make it easier for the miners to get funding as they will be registered and licensed. Funding will help gold panners erect proper mining infrastructure and buy equipment for extraction as opposed to the current scenario where most of them have makeshift structures that are susceptible to collapse.
We thus applaud the Minister of Mines and Mining Development Obert Mpofu for working on amending the Mining Act to reflect the importance of gold panners to economic development.
Making gold panning legal, also means that the miners cease to play hide-and-seek with the police and can now take responsibility for their activities.
It makes it easier to have them trained and educated on environmental issues and on proper mining procedures to avoid disasters that have claimed the lives of many gold panners.
Haphazard gold panning has left many areas destroyed, with numerous open pits as the panners move from one area to another, posing a danger to the environment.
No wonder they have been accused of causing land degradation.
Activities of gold panners in the past have caused soil erosion and massive siltation of rivers and it is our hope that this can be averted once there are rules and regulations to be followed.
We hope this should come to an end when their operations are legalised. The Environmental Management Agency should play a bigger role educating the panners on land recovery and other conservation methods. We cannot ignore the important role that panners play in the economy given that they contribute about a third of gold delivered to Treasury. It is a fact that Government has been losing a lot of money by criminalising gold panners who end up selling the mineral to foreigners who smuggle it out of the country.
President Mugabe has also talked about legalising gold panning and even appealed to those interested to be licensed to access Government assistance. The President also emphasised the need for gold panners to protect the environment.
According to the latest African Development Bank (AfDB), the mining industry is looking at producing more than 14 tonnes of gold this year.
In 2011, gold production rose by 38 percent and for the first time since 2006, Zimbabwe’s production breached the 10-tonne mark, a development that saw us eligible for re-entry onto the London Bullion Market.
The continued arresting and chasing away of gold panners may also have contributed to the shrinking of gold deliveries from the small-scale sector by 2,03 percent.
The panners ended up selling to foreigners who would then smuggle the gold out of the country.
We are optimistic that legalising gold panning will indeed result in an increase in gold deliveries as panners sell on the market without fear of being arrested or questioned on the origin of the mineral.
Online Reporter