Monday 16 December 2019 – By Business Reporter
HARARE (Mining Index) – The ZANU PF National Youth League is in a drive to establish massive, modern mining investments in all the ten provinces of Zimbabwe by adopting technologies that process mining dumps for gold extraction through use of Carbon in Pulp (CIP).
CIP is an extraction technique introduced in the 1980s for recovery of gold liberated into a cyanide solution as part of the gold cyanidation process.
In an interview during the 18th Annual People’s Conference held in Goromonzi recently, ZANU PF National Secretary for Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment in the Youth League, Tonderai Bosha revealed the Youth League invested a significant amount towards CIP projects across the country.
“This project has been funded through Homelink. We received about $3 million Zimbabwean dollars this year for the project.”
“This is the biggest project that we have embarked on where we are setting up gold dump processing centres in every province to extract gold from previous gold mining activities.”
“The technology that has been brought forward has given us a lot of information in terms of the content of the gold that is contained in those dumps,” said Bosha.
The Youth League acquired one dump per province. However, Bulawayo and Harare will choose other provinces to set up the CIP projects as they do not have mining areas within their provinces. Harare will chose between Mashonaland East and Central while Bulawayo will choose between Matebeleland South and North.
He indicated the Youth League is in the initial stages of installing CIP machines in the provinces, hoping for completion by January 2020 when they expect all machines to be fully operational.
Bosha said the Youth League is positive the CIP project would be sustainable, employing approximately 24 youths with direct jobs on site.
“We have copied projects that have been successful in processing of old dumps. We expect each plant to create employment of up to 24 youths. That’s direct employment for the CIP,”
“We have a local supplier, Metal Component, a company in the business to manufacture mining equipment. They are manufacturing the machines for us,” he added.
He revealed the CIP project belongs to the national Youth League through a company called Murenga Holdings, run and operated by the Youth League and headed by Lewis Matutu as the chairman,”
“In Mashonaland East, we placed our CIP plant at Joyce Mine in Beatrice, Penhalonga in Manicaland, Mashava in Masvingo, Shurugwi in Midlands while Mashonaland West is situated in Gadzame, although in Chegutu, they are mining and then process the dump,” he said.
The Youth League also identified a big dump at Jumbo Mine in Mashonaland Central with a second dump situated in Bindura in the Matepatepa area. Matebeleland North and South dumps are around Filabusi and Lupane areas, of which are yet to receive the CIP machines.
He said some of the mines are operational while some closed and left dumps. ENDS
