ZMF, Fidelity partner to enhance gold mobilisation, production and delivery
In an effort to eradicate gold leakage in Zimbabwe, yesterday Fidelity Printers and Refiners (FPR) got into a mutual strategic partnership with Zimbabwe’s biggest association in the Mining industry, the Zimbabwe Miners Federation.
By Dickson Rudairo Mapuranga
Fidelity Printers and Refiners General Manager Fradreck Kunaka said that the essence of the partnership between the two parties is to enhance gold mobilisation, production and delivery to FPR.
Small scale miners are the biggest producers of gold in Zimbabwe. Last year Zimbabwe achieved a record gold production of 33,28 tonnes up from 24, 8 tonnes in 2017. Small scale miners’ production was at 21,7 tonnes, while primary producers accounted for the remaining 11, 5 tonnes.
According to Kunaka the spirit behind the partnership between FPR as the sole gold buyer and exporter and ZMF as the largest body that regulates and controls the activities of small scale miners in Zimbabwe, is to remove the current opinion that Fidelity Printers and Refiners is milking miners of their hard-earned foreign currency.
“We need to come together and map up a way forward in terms of enhancing production for the benefit of the nation and remove the perception that there are bad boys and girls,” said Kunaka.
Kunaka also said that the partnership between FPR and ZMF will help the two to come up with policies that regulate the small mining sector in order to make the operation of the sector friendlier.
“We are able to come up with strategies that will ensure that there is a regulation of the sector given that it’s a sector where more players don’t have enough equipment,” he said.
Zimbabwe Miners Federation President Henrietta Rushwaya added saying that the quintessence of the partnership is to make the two parties resume duties that they were defaulting to other parties who do not have direct communication with the producers on the ground, as a result, there was a lot of gold leakages.
The ZMF boss also said that the Federation and Fidelity have to come up with strategies to register unregistered gold buyers and producers in order to minimise leakages that the country is experiencing.
“It is high time we don’t renege our roles, take upon what is supposed to be done by us, ensure whoever seems to be producing and buying gold out there is registered so that we come up with a register for producers and a register for buyers,” she said.