22 Jan 2017

Despite the recent construction boom in the Chobe district, quarrying companies in the district are crying foul for being side lined in major civil and construction projects.

Voicing their concerns during the Manufactured Sand pitso on Thursday Jnauary 19, a representative from Quarries Association Botswana Mr Milton Kachana highlighted that local companies continued to watch from the sidelines as big projects such as the on-going Kazungula Bridge and Kasane airport upgrade take off without benefitting anything from the projects.

He added that they had positioned themselves as local companies to take advantage of the current wave of huge construction projects in Chobe but to no avail.

“What we have observed is that government waiver licensing requirements for major projects yet we have to follow lengthy procedural requirements to acquire those licenses,” he said.

Mr Kachana added that while there were many quarries allocated in Chobe, only one was operational in Lesoma mining concrete stones.

He explained that many had to close because they could not compete with government sponsored projects.

As such, he said currently residents had to rely on illegally mined sand for construction purposes or face a P15 000 charge for transporting sand from Francistown which is 500 kilometres away.

He therefore called for effective stakeholder relationship with the Department of Mines and timely facilitation by Department of Environmental Affairs.

Councillor for Plateau ward Mr Boitumelo Kanyetu emphasised the urgency needed to avail a reliable legally licensed burrow pit for provision of sand as some residents had resorted to illegal mining in protected forestry reserves.

In her response to the concerns raised, the director of Department of Mines Ms Selinah Mogojwa encouraged Village Development Committees and business community to apply for mining licenses to legalise the mining operations in their villages.

Regarding waivers, Ms Mogojwe said they do not issue any waivers but instead issue licenses to contractors when the area they were operating in had no licensed quarries.

Ms Mogojwe explained that as a department they had to look at substitutes for river sand as it was evident that the country had run out of river sand.

The alternative, she said, had to be environmentally friendly and sustainable hence after thorough research and experiments they settled for manufactured sand and clay works as substitutes to river sand.

Manufactured sand is purpose-made crushed fine aggregate produced from a suitable source material.

Unlike river sand, it does not require blending with pit sand in order to improve its workability for plastering purposes.  ends