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Tendai Mugabe Senior Reporter
Government has ordered that maximum security be maintained at Pickstone Peerless Mine in Chegutu until next week when it pronounces its position relating to the alleged trapping of six people at the mine.
This is to ensure security of the facilities and evidence gathered at the mine although it is slowly turning out that the reported trapping was a hoax.
As such, Mines and Mining Development secretary, Professor Francis Gudyanga, told The Herald yesterday that Pickstone Peerless Mine should forthwith stop pumping out water from the shafts as it would be a sheer waste of resources.
Pickstone Peerless said it was still computing the costs it had incurred during excavating and pumping out water from the shafts for more than a week.
Said Prof Gudyanga: “We discussed this matter with the Minister (Walter Chidhakwa) and it was reported to Cabinet. Our officers will remain on the ground perhaps until next Monday when the Minister will announce a position.”
“If the mine stops pumping out water, we will not complain but we want security to be maintained at the mine to ensure that there are no funny games taking place there.”
Pickstone Peerless Mine manager, Mr Dennis Mtombeni, yesterday said their operations were deeply affected by the alleged trapping.
“We have had to pull more manpower to go and man that area and some excavators to excavate the backfilled area,” he said.
“Since the alleged trapping was reported, we were also pumping out water from the shaft and all our attention had shifted to that matter with a view to retrieving the alleged trapped people.
“We do not have an electricity point at that place so we had to run big generators. The contractors who are also working here also withdrew their machinery from the field because they feared that their equipment might be damaged by the illegal panners who were refusing to leave this place.
“The panners were violent and they used to spend the whole day singing here and at times the Member of Parliament (Cde Dexter Nduna) comes and addresses them.
“Currently, we are still computing the costs that we have incurred but on average we are looking at a loss of about 11kgs of gold.”
This excludes labour and material expenditure committed on excavation and pumping of water from the shafts.
Mr Mtombeni said the mine was currently producing an average of 40kg of gold and plans were afoot to expand operations with a view to reaching 100kg in the next few months. Pickstone Peerless is a highly mechanised mine which invested in excess of $15 million before it commissioned its plant in February.
Mr Mtombeni said since they started actual gold milling in August, the mine had been depositing an average of 40kg of gold to Fidelity Printers.
Online Reporter