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Midlands Reporter
Runde Rural District Council (RDC) is crafting environmental policies that will enable the local authority to descend on rogue miners who fail to comply with environmental laws as it moves to address perpetual land degradation and deforestation due to mining activities.

Government once suspended chrome mining activities and halted the allocation of mining claims to prospecting miners along Shurugwi-Zvishavane Road, citing massive land degradation, particularly by miners who fall short in complying with environmental laws.

Government has also ordered chrome miners along the Shurugwi-Zvishavane Road to start reclaiming pits after extracting the mineral and to stop mining close to the road shoulders.

The chrome miners have been posing a threat to the road and the lives of animals due to unplanned extraction of the mineral.
Runde RDC chief executive officer Mr Godden Moyo said the local authority was working with a local non-governmental organisation, Centre for Conflict Management and Transformation (CCMT), to craft environmental policies to address issues of deforestation and land degradation among others that are being caused by mining and farming activities.

“Zvishavane is a mining community and we have serious challenges of lack of compliance by miners in the area. We are in the process of crafting environmental policies that compel miners to comply with environmental laws as well as practising sustainable mining that preserves the environment.

“Issues of land degradation as a result of mining activities are on record and we have been grappling with miners to comply with environmental laws. The policies are not restricted to mining, but will cover a wide spectrum, although mining is one of the areas,” he said

CCMT has for long been advocating for formulation of policies that protect the environment from mining activities.
Villagers in Zvishavane have lost livestock, and in some instances people die after falling into the abandoned shafts, which have also become breeding areas for mosquitoes and other water-borne diseases. Since the surge in chrome prices on the world market, there has been an increase in the extraction of the mineral along the road, a development that has seen excavators and front-end loaders being used by miners just a few metres from the Shurugwi-Zvishavane Road.