28 Nov 2016

 Depletion of river sand especially in the Southern area has left Botswana without a choice but to start to use manufactured sand.
This was said by the director in the Department of Mines Ms Sellinah Mogojwa in a Manufactured Sand Pitso organised by the Ministry of Mineral Resources, Green Technology and Energy Security in Mahalapye on Monday.
Ms Mogojwa said that this situation had forced them to stop giving sand mining licence in the Southern area of the country because rivers were drained.
Ms Mogojwa said lack of monitoring permit holders for sand mining was one of the things that caused depletion of river sand as they did not follow the right procedures of mining.
She said even the community  members where there was river sand lived in fear as some of the illegal miners were dangerous and dug big holes in the rivers that killed their children and livestock during rainy seasons.
She said that kind of mining drained rivers and left them without sand and that was why they had decided to introduce manufactured sand to give rivers allowance to recharge.
The theme of the event was ,There is an alternative to river sand, use manufactured sand and clay bricks.
For his part, principal geologist at Botswana Geoscience Institute Mr Ngie Wantlo said manufactured sand was a purpose -made sand made out of stones that was used the same way as river sand.
Mr Wantlo said  research had been done that showed manufactured sand was stronger than river sand.
He said that the use of manufactured sand would not only relieve river sand but also create employment to unemployed youth in the quary. He said it would also be easily monitored to make sure that the right procedure of producing it was followed by thoroughly checking the quary.
He said suspicions that were made by other miners that this sand used a lot of water and could not be used without mixing it with river sand had been proven wrong.
He said it was workable sand that could be used with the same ratio as the river sand and it would reduce soil erosion. ENDS