Govt addresses KP recommendations

avi

Monday, July 13, 2009

From Thupeyo Muleya in BEITBRIDGE

Government is addressing recommendations made by the Kimberly Process review team that recently visited the country to appraise itself of Zimbabwe’s diamond mining industry.

Speaking after touring River Ranch Mine just outside Beitbridge last week, Mines and Mining Development Minister Obert Mpofu called on mining companies to complement Government’s drive to ensure Zimbabweans reaped the maximum benefit from their natural resources.

"As Government, we are working on addressing the recommendations made by the Kimberly Process review team that visited the country recently.

"We have committed ourselves on meeting the standard requirements of the global protocol. We are still studying some of the recommendations though we have started making adjustments especially at Chiadzwa area, where we have since courted a foreign investor to come on board.

"We expect the investor to be on the ground any time soon. However, there is a lot of work to do in terms of beefing up security and handling of the diamonds," he said.

He said the State was looking at partnering with at least six investors for Chiadzwa’s diamond fields.

The fields cover an area of 77 000 hectares with over 3 000 families staying there.

Government is presently working on the modalities of relocating the families, with whom Minister Mpofu said they had already reached an agreement over the issue.

He said Government was carrying out an exercise to curb the rampant smuggling of minerals out of the country.

The minister said they had so far budgeted US$2 million for the project which had already seen the recovery of 50kg of gold from the illegal market in four days.

The Kimberly Process Protocol is a global agreement among diamond producers and traders that regulates the sale of the resource on the legal market. Minister Mpofu commended River Ranch for installing state-of-the-art security at the mine to curtail smuggling.

The mine uses a four-tier security system imported from the United Kingdom to monitor its 7 000-hectare area along the Limpopo river, which is 50km away from South Africa’s Venetian Diamond Mine.

Minister Mpofu also said Zimbabwe’s indigenisation laws should not scare investors from the country’s mining sector.