The mining sector plays a pivotal role in the revival of the economy hence the need to supply them with more power in order to scale up production, Energy and Development Minister Fortune Chasi has said.

Speaking during a ministerial tour of Delta Gold’s Eureka Mine in Guruve, Minister Chasi said power cuts will soon be a thing of the past as he committed to ensure improved power supply at mines.

Eureka Mine was having challenges of erratic power supplies at the mine affecting production. Due to power outages, the mine was struggling to pump out water from its shafts.

Minister Chasi promised to address the challenge for mines to scale up production in order to grow the economy.

 “I was told that they are getting limited power supplies and we will be discussing with the relevant stakeholders to ensure that this challenge is addressed.

“Our top priority is to ensure that power is availed to the production sector. For our economy to grow, production should be scaled up and the duty is upon us in the energy sector to provide that power.”

Speaking on the same occasion, Mines and Mining Development Minister Winston Chitando said mining was integral in achieving governments vision of attaining an upper middle income status by 2030.

 “We have a target of hitting the 100-tonne gold production by 2023. This will contribute to the attainment of an (Upper) middle income class economy by 2030.

“Eureka Mine which was re-commissioned by President Mnangagwa last year, has a target of producing two tonnes of gold by 2021.

“We have come here to see the progress made so far since last year. The mine is way on track to achieving its production target in 2021. We expect them to have increased their production by 2023,” Minister Chitando said.

Delta Gold’s major shareholder, Dalliglio Chief Executive Officer Mr Michael Fowler promised that the mine will meet the targeted two tones of gold by 2021.

 “We are confident that by 2021 we will be producing up to 200kg of gold a month. This will be achieved during the first quarter of 2021.

“Power supplies have been our major challenge as we need to decommission the water in our mining shaft. Once this has been resolved, nothing will stop us from achieving our targets,” he said.

Mr Fowler also said that they were battling to contain artisanal miners who were posing a challenge to their production and appealed for government’s assistance.

 “Besides power cuts, we have a problem of artisanal miners flocking this area. We had to beef up our security as at times they will be more than 100 of them. Police are also helping us by arresting the artisanal miners, but they always come back.”

Zimbabwe Republic Police representative, Officer Commanding Guruve District, Chief Superintendent Robert Torevasei, promised that they will tirelessly work to keep artisanal miners at bay.

“We have been receiving reports of artisanal miners disrupting operations here and we always deploy our officers to assist the mine’s security in dealing with them.

“A number of them have been arrested so far. They usually target the mine’s dumpsite and we are always ready to assist the mine security when we are called upon to do so,” said Chief Supt Torevasei.