The remaining two bodies of miners who were trapped underground in a mine at Battlefields near Kadoma were brought to the surface on Thursday.
Eight people were rescued alive after being trapped underground for four days when mine shafts at the Cricket 3 Mine were inundated with flood waters on February 12. 28 miners lost their lives.
Speaking during a post-cabinet media briefing in Harare on Thursday, acting Information Minister Sekai Nzenza said:
This brings closure to the rescue efforts pertaining to the Battlefields Mine Disaster. Cabinet once again expresses its deepest condolences to the affected families and the artisanal mining fraternity in general.
The Battlefields Mine Disaster has prompted Cabinet Ministers to pledge law reforms to legalise the activities of the artisanal miners which they hope will lead to greater safety.
I begin to see the evil thinking of the government headed by the Mines Minister in trying to use the ” Use it or lose it law” by simply claiming that some companies have been renewing claims over and over again, which to my opinion is very legal and according to the law. Companies may be owning those shafts/mines that need feasibility studies to determine whether it is feasible to reopen or not and using historical production history to attract funding to conduct exploration. They need the asset to do that and that is the reason why they renew the claims. The government is well aware that it is not easy to raise money for any asset in Zimbabwe, and this may take long and what should companies do? It is the government causing these bottlenecks in terms of FDI by its weird policies and worse off you now want to expropriate someone asset and say someone has been holding onto it for speculative purposes? The Minister if he does that, he will be the worst Minister ever to drive away potential exploration money from coming into the country. I expect to hear the Minister propose a law banning anyone from entering into disused mines, no matter the mineral wealth or even how iddle it has been. I also expect the Minister to ban people from Minining on claims they do not have title to. The Gaika mine, Eldorado and the Cricket mines comes as very good examples. Parts of areas around Cricket are owned by Rio Zim and ACR and what if these two companies are to bring Partners who may want to partake in further developing the asset and they see a China City of illegals coming out of the shafts? How do they explain tenure/ ownership of the asset? Does the investor not have the feeling that the cream has already been creamed off? Does the government itself ever want these Mines to remain as they are and suggest to us that they will be developed by the Makorokoza? Who does not know that the Makorokoza go down in these disused mines and destroy support pillars rendering the mines to be death holes? At Gaika, I saw a recent drilling programme which probably cost the owners a fortune. Is the government not aware of this serious programme done and on what basis are the owners then said to be keeping it for speculative purposes? Why is it being illegally mined, when we all know it belongs to Duration Gold? It is only when we think deeply that we are able to rescue Zimbabwe, than Zimbabwe rescue us. I thank you!