State Mining Corporation (Stamico)
The launch will take place in a seminar which will be conducted for small scale miners across the country on the use of the technology.
The seminar will introduce to miners the use of cyanide, a chemical compound that contains monovalent combining group. It is a salt and is highly toxic.
Speaking to The Guardian in an exclusive interview at the just ended Public Servants Week in Dar es Salaam, Denis Silas, a geophysicist at Stamico said, in the first phase, the seminar will be conducted next month at Buhemba, Tarime District and will cover at least 200 miners.
“The new technology for mining has been obtained from Tanzania and is special for protecting the pollution of environment,” he said.
He added: “We have decided to introduce this technology because the mercury we used before has resulted into a lot of environmental hazards”.
“The mercury chemical not only destroys the environment, but it causes several health problems to miners and they are subsequently unable to afford health expenses,” he added.
Silas added that, we will also move to Geita, Mwanza for next seminar which will also include entrepreneurship programme together with how the miners can get security at their work places.
He explained that, we help the small scale miners to get capitals from Tanzania Investment Bank (TIB) to run their activities as the initiatives towards fighting against the existing problem in obtaining capital to run the business.
According to him, the miners fail to conduct geological research to identify whether the ground has minerals or not, due to lack of funds to do so, thus they hold mining which does not contain many minerals.
“In April this year, the Ministry of Energy and Minerals provided 11 small scale miners across the country with equipment worth 83m/-. Among them, four were women and the rest seven were men,” he explained.
He added that the Ministry has also set a 830m/- budget to help the small scale miners, at the end of this month.
Denis said Stamico is expected to conduct a survey from July to August to identify the areas which have gold, tanzanite, salt, diamond, gravel and sand, so as to help the miners to acquire the minerals easily.
Nevertheless, currently the market for minerals is not at good state as the price of minerals has drop, but we are looking for external market to help miners to sell their minerals.
Silas said that, they are expecting to produce 200 megawatts from coal mining extraction located at Kiwira which they will sell it to Tanesco, currently they are looking for a stakeholders for project to start.
State Mining Corporation is a state owned enterprise which was established in 1972 with the aim of increasing the contribution of the minerals sector to the national economy and creating employment opportunities to Tanzanians.
SOURCE:
THE GUARDIAN
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