Govt Big Lie Exposed: $13 Billion Lost In Diamond Underhand Dealings
Published: 2016 July 19 03:30:20 (24512 Views)
The government has confessed that it lost over $13 billion in underhand dealings in nearly 10 years that the firms had been mining the gems in the Chiadzwa diamond fields.
Government officials have been quoted refuting claims that close to $15 billion was lost in bogus diamond mining concessions.
Former mineral resources executive at the Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Company, Takawira Zhou, revealed to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Mines and Energy that most of the firms had not done studies to quantify the possible amount of diamonds in the areas that they were allocated to mine before commencing operations.
“People tried to start evaluating the deposits when they realised that the deposits were actually running very thin,” said Zhou.
“A lot of those companies did not have plans for the future for their operations. It looked like they were not sure of the security of tenure of the pieces of ground that they were given so they rushed into very rich pieces of ground and exploited as much as they could in the time that they had.”
Zhou said some of the miners were initially getting 20 and 45 carats per ton but overtime this went down to as low as 20 carats per 100 tons.
“The companies that started exploiting the resources there chose the richest pieces of ground from any other ground they were given and they never bothered to look at the whole parcel that they were given and to plan as to how to exploit those resources,” he said.
He said due to declining grades, some of the companies were forced to rework on ground that they had worked on before.
Zhou said the decision to consolidate the mines might not be worthwhile as the resource was depleted.
- Herald
Government officials have been quoted refuting claims that close to $15 billion was lost in bogus diamond mining concessions.
Former mineral resources executive at the Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Company, Takawira Zhou, revealed to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Mines and Energy that most of the firms had not done studies to quantify the possible amount of diamonds in the areas that they were allocated to mine before commencing operations.
“People tried to start evaluating the deposits when they realised that the deposits were actually running very thin,” said Zhou.
“A lot of those companies did not have plans for the future for their operations. It looked like they were not sure of the security of tenure of the pieces of ground that they were given so they rushed into very rich pieces of ground and exploited as much as they could in the time that they had.”
Zhou said some of the miners were initially getting 20 and 45 carats per ton but overtime this went down to as low as 20 carats per 100 tons.
“The companies that started exploiting the resources there chose the richest pieces of ground from any other ground they were given and they never bothered to look at the whole parcel that they were given and to plan as to how to exploit those resources,” he said.
He said due to declining grades, some of the companies were forced to rework on ground that they had worked on before.
Zhou said the decision to consolidate the mines might not be worthwhile as the resource was depleted.
- Herald
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