Small scale gold miners at work

The government has completed the revocation of some 800 licenses for gold prospectus. This follows an inquisition that revealed a lack of development progress which places the current owners in violation of their contracts.

Speaking in Geita recently, after visiting the Naruyeye gold mining site, Stephen Masele, the Deputy Minister for Energy and Minerals, said the decision was undertaken in part as the larger policy implementation takes ground.

The government intends to allocate more land to small scale miners. They have been recent scuffles between the small and large players.

“As a result, we have witnessed an increased number of conflicts between small scale miners and the large ones…fighting for the ever decreasing land. This is not good for the development of the economy,” he said.

The Management of Naruyeye told the Deputy Minister that stringent conditions on loans, lack of mining areas and insufficient legal representation, were but some of the challenges facing small scale miners.

In order to avoid such disagreements, he said, the government should conduct a countrywide land survey and allocate specific areas for small scale miners.

Deputy Minister Masele hailed small scale miners who have formed groups and conduct their jobs hence qualify for the loans.

He said the government has set aside 9bn/- this year as loan to be disbursed to small scale miners countrywide.