Miners association applies for gold buying licence

The Bulawayo Miners’ Association (BMA) was formed this year to represent the interest of small-scale miners in the city and is an affiliate of the Zimbabwe Miners Federation (ZMF).
In an interview, BMA advisor Mr Ishmael Kaguru said the association intended to buy gold from its members before selling the yellow metal to Fidelity Printers and Refiners.
“As a starting point, we would want to get a gold buying licence to enable the association to buy the mineral from its members. We have actually applied for the licence and hopefully any time soon we will be buying gold from our members and sell it to Fidelity Printers and Refiners,” he said.
He said BMA aimed at devising strategies to capacitate small-scale miners in the city in order to boost their operations.
“We intend to boost our members’ operations. And to do this we will use proceeds from Fidelity gold sales to establish a fund from which our own members can borrow funding to capacitate their operations,” said Mr Kaguru, who is also the ZMF national organising secretary.
Despite the liberalisation of the economy in February 2009, small-scale miners’ operations have remained hamstrung by liquidity constraints that have characterised the entire economy.
Due to cash flow challenges, small-scale miners across the country have struggled to secure mining equipment to boost their operations. In recognition of the challenges bedevilling the small-scale miners and the potential the sector has in promoting economic growth, Government has chipped in by unveiling programmes such the Mining Industry Loan Fund.
Mr Kaguru said BMA would this year seek to boost the miners’ production capacities by grouping its members so that they share mining equipment.
“We will group the miners so that those whose claims are close to one another can share mining equipment such as compressors in order to boost their production,” he said.
BMA has a membership of more than 200 in areas around Bulawayo such as Hope Fountain, Esiphezini and Umguza District.