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Lovemore Zigara, Midlands Correspondent
THE Zimbabwe Miners’ Federation (ZMF) will today convene a meeting with Apple Bridge Investments, a special purpose vehicle created by the Government to buy chrome from small scale miners.
The indaba comes in the wake of complaints by small scale miners that they are not being paid for chrome deliveries.
The Government came up with a $100 million special purpose vehicle through Apple Bridge Investments to buy the mineral at international prices to empower the local miners after lifting the ban on exports of raw chrome.
ZMF chief executive officer Wellington Takavarasha told Chronicle Business that the meeting, which will include small scale miners, the Mineral Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe (MMCZ) and representatives of Apple Bridge Investments, will seek to “map the way forward” after the impasse.
“We are meeting with Apple Bridge Investments and officials from MMCZ to map the way forward after receiving complaints from small scale miners that they are not being paid for their chrome deliveries.
“On the other hand Apple Bridge Investments is saying the small scale miners are not producing hence we are trying to untangle this blame game so that we can move forward,” said Mr Takavarasha.
The ZMF boss said one of the challenges which created the impasse was Apple Bridge’s decision to deal directly with small scale miners instead of coming through the federation which has structures which could have easily dealt such challenges.
Said Mr Takavarasha: “The challenge made by Apple Bridge was to deal directly with the chrome miners instead of coming through the federation and this makes logistics of trade much easier.”
“I am confident that we will find a solution to the impasse as chrome is back on the market now as prices are slowly picking up and we hope the miners will benefit from this”.
In June last year government announced the lifting of the chrome export ban which raised hopes for chrome miners to dispose of their stockpiles of 500 000 tonnes of the commodity.
@lavuzigara
Londile Moyo
Online Reporter