Women in mining speak on bottlenecks

Charmaine Brown Herald Reporter
The Zimbabwe Miners Federation (ZMF) says there is need to engage the Ministry of Women Affairs, Community, Small and Medium Enterprises Development to discuss issues affecting women in mining.

In an interview on Monday, ZMF vice president (women’s affairs) Mrs Lindiwe Mpofu said there were a number of challenges that women faced in the mining sector, hence the need to engage the ministry to discuss different initiatives that could assist them.

“As ZMF, we need to interact with our Ministry of Women Affairs to talk about how we can look at different initiatives that can assist the women in terms of safe mining zones and access to easy mining equipment we can use,” she said.
“There is also the challenge of access to proper documentation of our claims and formalisation because without proper funding it becomes difficult for women to expand their businesses.”

Mrs Mpofu said electricity shortages had a negative effect in the mining activities.
“There is also the issue of electricity shortages which has a negative impact in our operations and this is largely because we do need electricity to be able to run different machinery, resulting in many women being afraid to venture into mining because we cannot have most productive hours of the day without power,” she said.

“Yes, there is always an option of looking into solar energy and generators, but that is obviously expensive for us.
“However, miners do need assistance in terms of funding to get all these sort of components to assist with their operations.”