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Ten miners buried alive in Mutasa

Ten miners buried alive in Mutasa

Nick Mangwana

Ten gold miners are feared to have been buried alive at Premiere Mining area along Mutare river in Mutasa District, Manicaland.

Permanent secretary in the Ministry of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Mr Nick Mangwana on his twitter account yesterday said “Ten illegal gold miners are feared to have been buried alive at Premiere Mining area along Mutare river which is owned by Zimgold fields a privately owned company in Mutasa District, over the weekend. So far two bodies have been retrieved from one of the shafts” read the tweet.

Year-in, year-out, lives are lost in Zimbabwe’s mining sector, with corruption and inadequate monitoring of mining activities by the government cited as major causes.

For instance, since 2018 several accidents have been recorded; including the flooding of Battlefields mine in Kadoma, which killed 28 people and the collapse of Eldorado mine in Chinhoyi, killing 11 men in two separate incidents.

Other accidents include the collapse of Shurugwi’s Wonderer mine, trapping over 50 artisanal and illegal gold miners underground and the Nugget gold mine collapse in May, which killed eight people, as well as the blast at Mazowe mine in which eight people died.

Again, in February this year, two miners died after a shaft collapsed at the Globe and Phoenix Mine in Kwekwe District, 200 km southwest of the capital Harare.

In May this year, another worker at Vumbachikwe Mine died after he allegedly fell during a blasting exercise when he was alone underground.

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Last year, a man died in Gwanda at Berwick 3 Mine when a shaft he was working in collapsed.

Platinum giant Zimplats also recorded one fatality towards the end of the first quarter of 2019 at one of its mines, Mupfuti Mine.

On September 8, 2020, five artisanal miners got trapped underground at Task Mine in Chegutu and as of today four remain underground and only a single body was exhumed.

Zimbabwe Miners Federation (ZMF) Manicaland regional rep Judith Shadaya when contacted for comment said she had no knowledge of the unfortunate incident

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