Rushwaya creates a ZMF President interactive forum
Zimbabwe Miners Federation President Ms. Henrietta Rushwaya has created an Interactive forum were miners can interact and share ideas with the ZMF President.
The Whatsapp forum created on Friday at 20:31 hrs was fully subscribed to a four hours after its formation.
Speaking to Mining Zimbabwe, Rushwaya said, “The purpose of the forum is to give people in and outside the mining industry the opportunity to interact and share ideas with The ZMF President. This will enable me to improve where I lack, develop and grow in the manner I execute my duties as your listening President”.
She touched on the need to link miners with recommended local service providers as a way of doing away with bogus suppliers.
“It’s our fervent wish as ZMF to also use this forum to link our miners with reputable service providers whom we have a working relationship with. Please note there are a lot of bogus suppliers these days.”
“We would like to encourage design and engineering of our own crushers that may not be hammermills nor stamp mills nor round mills but also to suit our levels of operations and say this crusher machine was designed in Zimbabwe by Danai for example. No Forex is needed if people come up with homegrown solutions”.
“There are lots of issues that need to be shared amongst the various mining players including:-
(1) Recognition of the sector can only be effective if the sector embraces all the players. For example, Engineers have innovative concepts/ innovations that they think can be further developed using our miners, instead of people importing hammer mills, Harare Institute of
(2) We import transformers but at HIT 33kva transformers are available.
(3) Policy issues that we feel need to be addressed and redressed, Gold Trade Act, Use it or lose it needs to immediately come into effect especially given the currently ongoing (Chikorokoza Ngachipere) operation where illegal miners are being arrested for occupying mining areas that have not been utilised some of it since 1904. We need to engage the government and the Chamber of Mines regarding the above and a lasting solution is needed.
Rushwaya also spoke about naming and shaming deceitful people preying on the mining industry.
“As ZMF, we realised that there is an increase in a number of cases where people both local and foreign have been swindled of their hard-earned cash by unscrupulous elements on the pretext of claim identification, registration, pegging, etc. Kindly note that it is our duty as ZMF to guard against such malpractices and we shall name and shame the malcontents”.
The forum immediately ignited critical conversations that the President promptly responded to. Some of the issues raised were
“The real issues affecting miners today is the pricing model of our minerals and the participation of foreigners in small and medium scale mining”.
“What ZMF policy is on resource allocation, any percentages for People Living with Disabilities (PLWD)”
“Some Rural District Councils (RDC) charging miners sustainable amounts of over 200000rtgs” and much much more
Due to overwhelming response, Rushwaya announced on Saturday at seven am that she had created a second forum, which by the time of publishing this article the platform was almost full. We are going to be on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube by the end of the week she concluded.