The government should restrategise promoting young miners
Zimbabwe Miners Federation (ZMF) Youth in Mining Chairperson Mr. Timothy Chizuzu has said that the government of Zimbabwe needs to rethink how youth in mining are promoted in order to strengthen the growth of the small-scale sector to medium.
The government according to Chizuzu should revisit their mining financing strategy to create successful mining ventures where the youth will be the leading force in coming up with new ideas as well as being in the position to oversee the growth of the sector.
He urged the government to adopt an approach whereby the government will finance limited youth operations because mining is capital incentivize hence needs a lot of funding.
According to the ZMF youth boss, the government needs to finance at most ten projects per every province than to fund over 500 youth with very inadequate resources.
He also urged the government to create workshops where the youth will be taught to be financial and business literate before taking government loans.
“In terms of financing, the government should take an approach whereby they offer loans a small number like financing 10 people in each province than financing 500 youth with very little or insufficient funds.
“The government should not just give loans for the sake of giving loans, the government also needs to teach youth in mining financial and business management before giving them financial assistance.” He said.
According to Chizuzu, many Youths in the mining sector in Zimbabwe are not progressing well in the process some lose their mining concessions because they are at most incapacitated to run a successful mining operation.
Chizuzu said that many youths in mining who would have ventured into the sector to alleviate poverty and to create employment for themselves usually lack the experience to run an operation except the theoretical aspects they learned at school.
“We have several youths that are in mining but not progressing well. Most of them are not yielding the expected outcome as a result their claims are left to forfeit.
“Youth in Mining is incapacitated, most of them lack the experience to mine, some of them just come from school and start mining without proper knowledge of mining except for the theoretical aspects they learn from school,” Chizuzu said.
The ZMF youth boss also urged small scale miners who are doing well to employ college mining graduates for skills exchange programs whereby the young miners will bring in with them fresh ideas from school while at the same time learning how to run a successful small to medium mining operation.
He also urged young graduates to form syndicates and acquire mining concessions in the country at the same time seeking government and experience miners help in running those operations.
“There should be a skill exchange program in the sector, all small-scale miners should employ graduates to curb unemployment at the same time exchanging ideas with the youth people hence promoting the growth of small scale mining to medium scale.
“Young mining graduates should also form syndicates to acquire claims and start mining as professionals,” Chizuzu said.
Chizuzu also urged the government to preserve such mining as Quarry mining to locals particularly the youth because Quarry mining is not much complicated when it comes to exploration.
“Quarry mining should be reserved to locals, the government should empower young people to do quarry mining, those kinds of projects should be given to the indigenous citizens especially the youth,” the ZMF youth boss said.