by Sharon Tawuya
Harare, (New Ziana)—The Zimbabwe government is deploying scanners at border posts and increasing drone surveillance to curb the smuggling of minerals out of the country, a Cabinet Minister has said.
Mines and Mining Development Minister Polite Kambamura said this in the National Assembly Parliament on Wednesday during the Question and Answer session.
He said the government is tightening monitoring of exports to ensure correct declarations.
The remarks follow a report by the Minerals Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe (MMCZ) which recorded 18 cases of suspected mineral smuggling and irregular mineral movement between January and August 20 this year.
According to the inaugural MMCZ Mineral Resource Accounting and Surveillance Market Update released this week, the cases involved a combined 2 654.88 tons of mineral material and metal scrap with lithium, chrome and silica dominating the case register.
“We are currently putting tracking systems at the borders to track out minerals . We are going to change from manual to the computerized way of doing things ,” said Kambamura.
He said the government was working with the transport sector to install systems to verify the actual weight of minerals in export containers.
“We have increased surveillance to check that the minerals declared are correct because people were under declaring exports,” he said.
Kambamura said penalties would be imposed on companies and individuals found violating regulations, including those who fail to follow proper mining procedures.
“Hefty penalties will be charged to those who under declare. We are increasing surveillance along our highways and border fences through the use of drones and other systems to make sure that we minimise smuggling of raw materials,” he said.
He added that importers and exporters would also be checked for compliance with inspection fees, environmental requirements and other obligations.
On port operations, the Minister said the government would deploy guides to ensure exporters understand procedures and that officers are knowledgeable.
“We will put a guide to those areas at the Port so that we do this correctly and make sure that exporters know exactly the export procedures for the goods we bring out of the country,” he said.
New Ziana
