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Thupeyo Muleya Beitbridge Bureau
The Environmental Management Agency (EMA) is working on a raft of measures to minimise land degradation, especially in the mining sector.

In a statement yesterday, the manager responsible for environmental education, Ms Amkela Sidange said many people had turned to the environment for survival in the last few years, causing degradation.

She said in many cases, the scramble for opportunities was leading to mismanagement of the environment, resulting in the rise of environmental law violations.

“Among these several environmental violations is land degradation from chrome mining activities,” said the official.

“In the last two weeks with the assistance of the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP), we descended on the chrome mining activities in the Midlands Province to address land degradation from such mining activities along the Great Dyke.

“The operation covered high chrome mining districts in the province such as Kwekwe, Chirumanzu, Shurugwi, Zvishavane and Mberengwa.

“Our main objective was to establish the extent of land degradation as a result of chrome mining in these areas and the needs in terms of rehabilitation of mined areas”.

Ms Sidange said in the last two weeks, they conducted 659 inspections in mining areas in the Midlands Province where it turned out that 383 hectares of land had been degraded.

During the operation, EMA did general environmental monitoring and compliance inspections, responded to environmental complaints submitted by the public and prosecuted those violating the law.

Twenty-four environmental protection orders were issued to some offenders, compelling them to rehabilitate degraded areas, compile Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) plans for their projects and cease operations pending compliance.